DMD 0.161 release

[Derek Parnell]

On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:11:07 +0100, Stewart Gordon wrote:

> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Stewart Gordon wrote:
>>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>>> Mostly bug fixes.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.digitalmars.com/d/changelog.html
>>>
>>> "Shadowing local variable declarations is now deprecated."
>>>
>>> I thought it had always been illegal by the spec.
>> 
>> It wasn't implemented.
> 
> So you've implemented it as a deprecation for the time being, rather 
> than banning it altogether?

Walter's actions here made sense to me. A lot of people had begun to think
that the bug lay in the documentation and not the implementation, and so
coded accordingly. Now, rather than force them to immediately change all
their source code, Walter has allowed them a way to gradually convert to
the real specification. 
 
 
>>> "Fixed Bugzilla 36  (better error message)"
>>> "Fixed Bugzilla 85  (now issues error message)"
>>>
>>> And they're also marked as fixed in Bugzilla.  However, at the moment 
>>> I can't seem to find the bit of the spec that indicates that either is 
>>> illegal code.
>> 
>> 36: forward references are an ongoing issue, I'd like to get rid of all 
>> such errors. But in the meantime, having feet of clay, some will give 
>> error messages instead.
> 
> Nobody else I know would claim that changing the error message resulting 
> from a bug constitutes fixing the bug.

It could be argued that #36 remain as 'open' so that the underlying bug is
eventually fixed. However, now that the message text has changed
(improved?) it might be better for us to open a new bug entry, using the
new message in the commentary, to keep this issue on Walter's TODO list. 


> And we could also do with some decent documentation on what arrays may 
> be converted to by explicit casting.

As you may have noticed, Walter often gets a bit busy. It might then be a
reasonable idea for you, or anyone else, to have a go at writing this
documentation update and sending it to Walter for merging into the main
documentation body.

-- 
Derek
(skype: derek.j.parnell)
Melbourne, Australia
"Down with mediocrity!"
23/06/2006 9:17:40 AM