dmd/rdmd command line overhaul.

Abstract

This DIP seeks to improve dmd and rdmd’s command line flags, to make it more self-consistent and consistent with other tools (including other D compilers), more expandable, avoid existing corner cases, and better interact with other tools such as rdmd. It also proposes new flags and proposes a simple deprecation path to follow.

== Deprecate -offilename (etc) in favor of -of=filename (etc) == Dmd currently uses 2 conventions for its flags with arguments:

• type A: -offilename, -Dddocdir, -Dffilename, -Ipath (etc)
• type B: -version=ident (etc)

Type A, the most common in dmd, is problematic:

• it doesn’t scale: we can’t have any new flag starting with “-I” or “-L”, etc as it would create conflicts.
• it’s visually harder to tell from the command line the options from the arguments to these options
• it’s using a different (worst) convention from most other tools (including other D compilers, like gdc or ldc)

For reference, ldc uses: -of=filename, -Dd=docdir, -Df=filename, -I=path etc.

Deprecate passing file without extension

I would like to deprecate the current behavior where one can pass the file name without extension (main vs main.d) as source. Consistency is better than avoiding to type those 2 characters. I can create a pathological case where main.d is conflicting with main.d.d (the 2 files have different contents).

rdmd main.d

Which one do you think is called when we call rdmd main.d ?

Note, I raised a very analogous concern here 1 regarding naming of object files in a flat hierarchy, see my example with

dmd -c -oq foo/mod.d foo_mod.d

Improving compile and run with arguments

The current strategy of rdmd is to treat as input arguments anything after the first source file:

rdmd main.d myfirstprogramarg # a bit awkward, especially with optional extension it gets hard to parse visually.

This is error prone, and inconsistent with dmd’s behavior, which is:

dmd src1.d -run main.d myfirstprogramarg #a bit awkward, need to split the source from the main file.

It also makes it impossible to do this:

dmd -c main.d 
dmd -run main.o myfirstprogramarg #Error: -run must be followed by a source file

I suggest instead something simpler, explicit and consistent, using -args as a dmd command line argument, that would just work as well with rdmd:

dmd main.d src1.d -args myfirstprogramarg
rdmd main.d -args myfirstprogramarg

Distinguish dmd vs rdmd flags with a single flag –dflags

Currently we distinguish rdmd’s arguments from dmd’s arguments via ‘–’ vs ‘-‘. A better way IMO would be to have a special flag indicating the start of dmd’s (or gdc/ldc…) flags: eg

rdmd --chatty --dflags -version=myversion main.d

Deprecate rdmd –main (redundant with dmd -main)

dmd -main was introduced in 2.063, so we should deprecate the use of rdmd –main, which is redundant.

Deprecate dmd -property

see here

Provide Long and short help for dmd / rdmd

dmd: short help (same as dmd -help=short) dmd -help=long: long help (ie more detailed help) In particular some flags could have better description in a long help form: -gc, -gs Another point is that dmd –help is inconsistent currently: its the only dmd flag with 2 dashes. This might cause problem with rdmd’s current behavior to distinguish between dmd and rdmd flags, among other things.

New / improved flags

-unittest=package.module: unittest a given package/module proposed by Nick here. (Nick suggested -unittest=pagkage.name.* but we’re going to have ‘transparently make module into package’ implemented so that particular form might not be necessary)

-L=’space separated list of commands for linker’ eg: dmd -L=’-L/opt/local/lib/ -ljpeg’ main.d

-profile_file=filename: to save profile log file to a given filename instead of default currentdir/trace.{def,log}

Deprecation path

To implement those changes to dmd and rdmd, we can support both existing and new behavior using the following deprecation path:

1) Make all future flags have type B instead of type A.

2) Migrate all A flags to B flags (say in next dmd release):

2a) One way is to introduce command line arguments -flagstyle=old or -flagstyle=new:

dmd -offilename main.d #works but generates a warning for now, and error in a subsequent dmd release
dmd -flagstyle=old -offilename main.d #works and does not generate a warning.
dmd -flagstyle=new -of=filename main.d #works. After a certain time passed, -flagstyle=new is implied

Note, A and B conventions for flags that currently are using A convention can’t be mixed in a command line call, eg: -offilename -Ddoc=dir will give error, in all 3 cases above.

2b) An alternative way is to use a new binary name (dmd2, reminds of D2, ldc2, ldmd2) instead of -flagstyle=new. I don’t like this as much somehow, as it requires compiling 2 binaries instead of 1, which complicates build.

3) Likewise with the other proposed changes: -flagstyle=old would use existing behavior, -flagstyle=new would use proposed new behavior.

Notes

It seems at least some of the changes proposed have support of Walter (here).

Copyright

This document has been placed in the Public Domain.