{"id":1428,"date":"2018-03-06T13:56:15","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T13:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dlang.org\/blog\/?p=1428"},"modified":"2021-10-08T11:05:31","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T11:05:31","slug":"ldc-1-8-0-released","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dlang.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/06\/ldc-1-8-0-released\/","title":{"rendered":"LDC 1.8.0 Released"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"LDC, the D compiler using the LLVM backend<\/a>, has been actively developed for going on a dozen years, as laid out by co-maintainer David Nadlinger in his DConf 2013 talk<\/a>. It is considered one of two production compilers for D, along with GDC<\/a>, which uses the gcc backend and has been accepted for inclusion into the gcc tree<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The LDC developers are proud to announce the release of version 1.8.0, following a short year and a half from the 1.0 release<\/a>. This version integrates version 2.078.3 of the D front-end (see the DMD 2.078.0 changelog<\/a> for the important front-end changes), which is itself written in D, making LDC one of the most prominent mixed D\/C++ codebases. You can download LDC 1.8.0 and read about the major changes and bug fixes<\/a> for this release at GitHub.<\/p>\n

More platforms<\/h3>\n

Kai Nacke, the other LDC co-maintainer, talked at DConf 2016 about taking D everywhere<\/a>, to every CPU architecture that LLVM supports and as many OS platforms as we can. LDC is a cross-compiler: the same program can compile code for different platforms, in contrast to DMD<\/a> and GDC<\/a>, where a different DMD\/GDC binary is needed for each platform. Towards that end, this release continues the existing Android cross-compilation support, which was introduced with LDC 1.4. A native LDC compiler to both build and run D apps on your Android phone<\/em> is also available for the Termux Android app<\/a>. See the wiki page for instructions on how to use<\/a> one of the desktop compilers or the native compiler to compile D for Android.<\/p>\n

The LDC team has also been putting out LDC builds for ARM boards, such as the Raspberry Pi 3. Download the armhf build<\/a> if you want to try it out. Finally, some developers have expressed interest in using D for microservices, which usually means running in an Alpine container. This release also comes with an Alpine build of LDC, using the just-merged Musl port by @yshui. This port is brand new. Please try it out and let us know how well it works.<\/p>\n

Linking options – shared default libraries<\/h3>\n

LDC now makes it easier to link with the shared version of the default libraries (DRuntime and the standard library, called Phobos) through the -link-defaultlib-shared<\/code> compiler flag. The change was paired with a rework of linking-related options. See the new help output:<\/p>\n

Linking options:\n\n-L= - Pass to the linker\n-Xcc= - Pass to GCC\/Clang for linking\n-defaultlib=<lib1,lib2,\u2026> - Default libraries to link with (overrides previous)\n-disable-linker-strip-dead - Do not try to remove unused symbols during linking\n-link-defaultlib-debug - Link with debug versions of default libraries\n-link-defaultlib-shared - Link with shared versions of default libraries\n-linker=<lld-link|lld|gold|bfd|\u2026> - Linker to use\n-mscrtlib=<libcmt[d]|msvcrt[d]> - MS C runtime library to link with\n-static<\/pre>\n
Other new options<\/strong><\/p>\n