Last update March 7, 2012

Really Free Compiler



Is there any free compiler for the D language? The DMD license* is awfull, it is almost as bad as Sun's Java license. It is full of side notes and unneccessary explanations trying to give the appearance of being free, but somewhere on the bottom you see that you are not allowed to distribute without having Digital Mars's permission.

Which kind of freedom is it?

You can download the DMD compiler and development system for free. You can distribute applications written and compiled with DMD any way you like. You can redistribute the Phobos library source code pretty much any way you please (much of it is public domain, the rest is copyrighted and nearly all freely redistributable). The DMD front end source code is GPL'd and freely redistributable. What you cannot distribute is the DMD binary itself.

    • -Walter
My understanding of the license that it only extends to the compiler and phobos lib itself. This makes sense given that nobody but DigitalMars should be distributing or maintaining their compiler. Like all compiler licenses, it does not extend to anything you compose using the software (barring Sun's "no nukes clause" for Java), so you should still be as free as you like with your own code.

    • only the DMD compiler backend, not the frontend source code and not Phobos
If that's not enough, you can always use GDC, which is indeed open source (not sure which license) and works with the GCC toolchain.

- EricAnderton

    • GDC is Free Software, and under the GNU General Public License (GPL)
    • Phobos is under the zlib/libpng license, both for DMD and for GDC.
    • --AndersFBjörklund

Licenses

The Software is not generally available software. It has not undergone
testing and may contain errors. The Software was not designed to operate
after December 31, 1999. It may be incomplete and it may not function
properly. No support or maintenance is provided with this Software. Do
not install or distribute the Software if
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Do not use this software for life critical applications, or applications
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Photo credits: Courtesy of NASA/JPL/Caltech
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