[Scons-dev] D support, not sure what to do

[Dirk Bächle]

Hi Russel, hi Jean-Baptiste,


thanks a lot for starting and chiming in on this topic, which I think is 
an important one. When I read Russel's other (opinionated) post about 
how D is likely to gain more ground than Rust/Python in the future, I 
asked myself: What can we possibly do to support this? How can we be 
ready for this stream of development if it should really happen in, 
let's say, 2019?


So I'm all ears for trying to get better support for D into the SCons 
core. For me the main question, referring to your subject of "..., not 
sure what to do", is: What exactly would have to be done to make SCons 
the canonical choice as build system for D?


Can someone (we together) compile a list of things that would have to 
get implemented and improved? Something along the lines of:


- We need recursive Globbing. (Full support of Ant-like syntax)

- We need to be able to handle required Libraries as leaf nodes in the 
dependency tree, even if they reside in a remote repository/artifactory.

- We need to be able to cache the contents of those libraries locally 
(in case of being offline).

....

(I'd like to continue this list but my knowledge of D is obviously 
restricted...so feel free to add "- We need more SCons core devs to be 
proficient in D development." to the list above ;) )


Then we should have a look at this list, and decide which points are 
technically feasible and "in line" with SCons' basic design principles. 
We can probably also identify a number of features that are not only 
helpful for D...but other languages/toolchains as well. Those should get 
the highest priority perhaps...but I also believe that any kind of 
development in the core sources, even if strictly D-oriented, is good 
for the project.


Best regards,


Dirk