The D Language Front-End Finally Merged Into GCC 9
The D language support for GCC has long been sought after with over the past two years going through several revisions. Back in June of 2017 is when the GCC Steering Committee approved of adding the D front-end but it's taken more than a year to get the code in adequate shape for merging.
Last month there was a renewed push for D in GCC 9 while on Sunday evening that front-end and related code was finally merged to mainline GCC.
This is great timing for GCC 9 with its feature development ending in November and had the GCC D front-end been delayed and further would have been pushed off to GCC 10.
The code is merged for GDC including the libphobos library (D run-time library) and D2 test suite. Adding the D support touches more than three thousand files (most of which is test suite cases) and 859,714 lines of code.... Yes, the better part of a million new lines.
This front-end is long what's been available as GDC for the GNU D Compiler and with its history dating back to around 2004.
Those unfamiliar with D but curious about its syntax can find various code snippets on Wikipedia and Dlang.org.
GCC 9.1 will be the initial GCC9 stable compiler release with GDC support and it's due for release around the end of Q1'2019.
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