LDC

Compilers: Overview — DMD — GDC — LDC ✎

LDC uses the LLVM backend for code generation. LDC typically generates substantially faster binaries than DMD.

Guides

• Building LDC from source
• Building and hacking LDC on Windows using MSVC
• Installing LDC on Gentoo

Project status

In general, LDC should work fine on most x86/x86-64 Unix-like systems, including Linux, OS X 10.7+ and most BSD flavors. Code generation should work for other platforms supported by the LLVM MC codegen infrastructure (for example ARM), but druntime/Phobos support will most likely be lacking.

OS X version prior to 10.7 (Lion) are currently not supported by the D2 compiler, because LLVM's support for thread-local storage depends on functionality which first appeared in 10.7.

x86-64 Windows using MSVC

• LDC/LDC2 from master branch compiles without patches.
• See Building and hacking LDC on Windows using MSVC for detailed instructions.
• LLVM 3.1 is required (3.0 does not work because of missing TLS support); LLVM 3.2 is supported, too.
• druntime and Phobos compile but linker errors are still possible.
• Exception handling still needs work (see here for a first patch; the llvm-objdump part of the patch is here and was commited in LLVM 3.3)
• Contact: kai@redstar.de

ARM

• Code generation is known to work.
• Some initial work has been done on druntime, but support is not yet complete – see issue #116.

Useful Links

• Issue tracker (GitHub)
• Source code (GitHub)