Prioritizing bug fixes & improvements to D

[torhu]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>> "Walter Bright" <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
>> news:fasudc$1mvc$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>> The problem is, forward references also have a high cost to fixing.
>> 
>> They also have a high benefit: the compiler will no longer give errors (that 
>> are impossible to workaround without serious redeisgns) on otherwise valid 
>> code.
>> 
>> Furthermore, delaying issues that are difficult to fix means they will never 
>> be fixed, at least not on any reasonable timescale.  You know that with all 
>> the new features you're going to be introducing that there will be tons of 
>> bugs, probably lots of little easy ones.  Keep squashing all the little 
>> ones, though, and the big ones will just fester.
>> 
>> Another one that comes to mind is broken selective/renamed import privacy 
>> (bugzilla 313/314).  
> 
> I hate those import bugs too, but are they really preventing anyone from 
> getting work done?  It's not hard to work around usually.

It becomes a real problem when porting code from say, C, because then 
you don't want to reorganize the whole thing to avoid forward references 
errors.  If you're starting from scratch you can usually fix the 
problems with some amount of trial and error, but if you're starting 
with a couple of dozens of files ported from another language, it's a 
lot harder.

The problem is that it's very hard to figure out what exactly causes 
these errors, so fixing them can take a lot of time.  You don't know 
exactly what causes them, and you don't know exactly why it works if you 
manage to fix them.  It's just no fun.

To make matters worse, dmd 1.018 introduced a new forward reference 
error into one of my projects.  For now, I've just documented that you 
need to use dmd 1.017 or older to compile it.  Without a simple test 
case, reporting it in the bugzilla will only get me replies the likes of 
'dude, please post a minimal test case, or nothing will happen'.  Making 
such a test case could take me hours, and if it leads to the bug 
(regression, even) getting fixed, it's still just the tip of the iceberg 
when it comes to forward reference errors.

This kind of seemingly random errors have a really high pain-in-the-ass 
factor.  Please make them go away.  Or at least document the known bugs 
and their workarounds.