User Defined Attributes

[David Nadlinger]

On Tuesday, 6 November 2012 at 08:26:14 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> We can debate the syntax. I don't have a store set by this one. 
> I was more interested in getting the semantics right. Anyhow, 
> it's nice to have a working prototype to experiment with rather 
> than a paper airplane.

Yes, it is nice to have a working prototype indeed. What is not 
so nice in my opinion, however, is that this first prototype 
straight to Git master, without any prior evaluation, at a time 
where the general goal is to stabilize the language.

What if the implementation doesn't pan out as planned? Do you 
want to delay the next release until the new feature has become 
stable? It can be a big mess to hastily revert the commits again 
after the same areas might have been touched by other, unrelated 
sets of changes.

This is exactly what branches are good for. People can experiment 
with the new additions and shortcomings can be fixed, and then, 
if everything looks solid, the branch can be merged back into 
master – without affecting work on the main branch in the 
meantime (it has been three months since the last release, and 
there are quite a few open regressions).

Even Andrei submits pull requests for any non-trivial Phobos 
changes. Might I suggest adopting a similar policy for DMD, at 
least when language changes/additions are concerned?

David