DLF September 2023 Planning Update

[Paul Backus]

On Tuesday, 14 November 2023 at 15:05:34 UTC, Steven 
Schveighoffer wrote:
> When considering how this should work, I would strongly suggest 
> it be the default to work with the current edition of the 
> language. Nobody wants to always have to attribute their module 
> (or whatever other opt-in mechanism) to use current features. 
> It's going to be a WTF moment for all newcomers to D.
>
> This brings us to the problem that no prior libraries have 
> editions marked on them. So I think there needs to be an 
> external mechanism to be able to set the edition for a package 
> or module from the command line, or somehow in a config file. 
> Or you can set the "assumed" edition using a switch (but it 
> should still default to "current").

Worth noting that this is exactly how GCC handles different 
revisions of the C and C++ standards. [1] It defaults to 
`-std=gnu18` (C17 with GNU extensions) and `-std=gnu++17` (C++17 
with GNU extensions), which are the most recent versions that are 
fully implemented, but older versions (and previews of newer 
ones!) can be selected on the command line.

D's philosophy of making the safe, recommended choice the default 
has served it well for features like bounds checking, default 
initialization, assertions, etc. I hope very much that the same 
philosophy will be applied to editions.

[1] 
https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-13.2.0/gcc/C-Dialect-Options.html