[brad]

Ant,

We welcome the help. John and I have sporadic time to work on it, and are using it to teach ourselves OO and D. We are by no means experts, so if we ever get anywhere with this, we are going to need some experts to get into our code and fix our bonehead mistakes. I realize that posting some of our progress may scare the hell out of some people who may want to use this lib in the future, but here goes:

<comments embedded>


Ant wrote:
> how it the SWT port going?

Ugh. John is tweaking the makefile to see if we can get around the forward references (remember those from your earlier posts with Lars?). I'm just trying to get the thing to compile with our Hello World app.

>
> I a week or two I'll finish a big project at work
> and take a few weeks (2003) vacations. I would like to help.

Sweet. Send me an email and I'll get you set up to check out the code from our Subversion server. There's also a forum up and running so we can keep track of our questions and not bother the NG here.

>
> Beside partial implementation of interfaces on abstract classes
> how did you solve the other java->D conversion problems:
>
> - How automatic did you made the conversion?

Beyond doing a find/replace for the following, the conversion has been totally manual:

boolean --> bit (could have used aliased bool)
String --> char[]
SWT --> DWT (mostly consts and exception names)
static {} --> commented out
instanceof --> marked with TODO: (John may have one of these done in point.d or rectangle.d somewhere, using typeof)
array initialization { } --> [ ]
listeners --> commented out, waiting for delegates
classes as structs --> kept them classes for now, but may convert later.

Also, I have only worked on the Win32 port, and we will have a bunch of work using the version() {} construct in D when it comes time to fold in linux (gtk+). John is working on linux some, and I know your preference. I just don't have access to a linux box right now...


> - library
> did you create a lib with String, Vector and other very common
> java classes (I would have done so, Walter expressed disagreement)

We did not choose to make libs/utils with common Java classes (String, Vector), but wanted to port to the D way (i.e. try to go with Walter's thoughts).


> and mostly I'm curious on how to you do the static initializations
> (I don't think is called static initialization, here is the example):
> class A
> {
> B b = new B(); // illigal in D (right?)
> public A()
> {
> //
> }
> }
>

Not sure what you're getting at here. Maybe you could look at the code when your project is done...


> Ant
>
>
_________________
I really like the vest!

[JJR]

To those that have been paying attention to this:

I've done little work on DWT during the last week. The last thing I did was to rearrange my project files in eclipse slightly and test the subversion download on Windows. Unfortunately, in the process, I seem to have uploaded a version to the server too. Oops! That was last week. Hopefully it hasn't messed up the project setup for anyone. I've converted the makefile also so that there is now a Linux version. Basically I just had to change most of the '\' to '/'. I tested the makefile on Linux in eclipse and it got just as far as the windows version. So that's good.

My next step is to test putting some import statements within classes to see if I can get a little further than before. I know Brad tried it before, but I'll give it another try. It may eliminate a tolerable amount of forward references in the newer project modifications I made.

The other thing that I would like to do is perhaps set up some test cases for Walter to demonstrate the forward reference problem. It would just be so much easier if this issue could be somewhat resolved in the compiler.

I'm still trying to get familiar with subversion, so updates may not appear right away.

Later,
John

[brad]

Okay, I'm back from vacation, and will attempt to put some hours to DWT and the site as well. Your progress on the makefile sounds cool, as does the progress on linux. We'll need to do some work on the OS class for linux as I have not even begun to look at that.

btw, it snowed a total of 100 inches in Lake Tahoe the two days before we skiied. Nice...
_________________
I really like the vest!

[brad]

[andy]

Java's static { ... } block is equivalent to static this() { ... } in D, as I understand it.
_________________
"Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." - Naomi Littlebear