On Sunday, 30 October 2022 at 18:24:22 UTC, Adam D Ruppe wrote:
it prolly just to keep newbs from making confusing mistakes and
getting weird behavior at startup. If there's two mains, which
one is the expected entry? Perhaps it could just be the one
that matches the permitted signature, and if there isn't one it
complains. But how does it know if there is one? Suppose
there's module A:
module a;
int main(int argc, char** argv) {}
And module B:
module b;
void main() {}
They are compiled separately:
dmd -c a.d
dmd -c b.d
dmd a.o b.o
Which one is the main you want to use? What if you just did
`dmd a.d`, should it error that the prototype is wrong, or just
give the user the linker error "could not find D main" when
they think they have it right there? (remember the linker
doesn't know what D signatures are so it can't print a helpful
message to correct the mistake).
Ah, makes sense to limit the possible low level error messages
with separate compilation because of the linker not knowing D
signatures. Thanks for the intuition.
