The -deps= switch is helpful, but can we also have a "-nogen" switch so
that a compile is done but no object files are created. Kind of like the
"-c" switch which does a compile but no linking.
Then we can use "-deps=dep.txt -nogen" to get the dependency data so build
tools can then work out what needs to actually be compiled. And in that
vein, a hash (eg CRC32, MD5, SHA256) of the file's used by DMD would be
nice to see in the 'deps' file. Would help build tools detect which files
have been modified.
May I make a small syntax suggestion for the deps format. Instead of
enclosing a path in parentheses, and using ':' as a field delimiter, have
the first (and last) character of each line be the field delimiter to use
in that line. The delimiter would be guaranteed to never be part of any of
the fields' characters. That way, we don't need escape characters and
parsing the text is greatly simplified.
Also, simplifying the paths by resolving the ".." and "." would be nice.
eg.
!std.stdio!c:\dmd\dmd\src\phobos\std\stdio.d!public!std.format!c:\dmd\dmd\src\phobos\std\format.d!E521D0FA!
