D programmin language programs available for ubuntu: dsss and libtango

D

Hi,

On december 08 i worked to make a better support in ubuntu linux of the D programming language which is the successor of the C programming language IMHO.

If it’s so powerful as i say why isn’t it used like the C language?

  1. it’s quite new, and there is just one book about this language and it’s name is Learn to Tango with D which i bought in pdf version for less than 11€
  2. There is no a standard library: there are two libraries phobos and tango. phobos is supported by Walter Bright which is the D programming language creator and it’s seems to be not too much powerful and it’s very lite. Tango is community supported, it has a book about it, it seems very powerful and does not need to much space, it’s written in D and it’s used by a lot of programs.
  3. Lack of free (read as full GPL) compiler
  4. No integration in Gnu linux distributions

Well, these are for me the big pitfails of the D language. While the 1 issue is solved by time the issues 2 and 3 are the most important ones that should be solved soon as possible to spread the D usage.

For issue 3 and 4 i thought i could do something. And i started working. We did a group in launchpad.net and we started working. Right now we packaged dsss and libtango for ubuntu. In ubuntu and debian there is the gdc compiler which seems to be no longer updated and there are some bugs still opened. The libtango and dsss packages we created are designed to work with gdc packages in ubuntu and debian. To start programming in D on ubuntu or debian you have just do edit your /etc/apt/sources.list and add the following lines:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/d-language-packagers/ubuntu jaunty main

Then install the dsss and libtango package with:

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install dsss libtango

Then you can start making your own D program and save it (eg program.d). To compile just do:

gdc -fversion=Posix -I /usr/include/d -L/usr/lib/tango/ program.d -lgtango

And your program will be compiled, just execute the result a.out to see your program running.

For issue 3 i’m still working on it 🙂

Next
I don’t like git too

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: