Tango / Phobos / future dilemma

[Chris Wright]

Sascha Katzner wrote:
> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>> Sad, since this is _really_ an issue that needs to be addressed.  No, 
>> I take that back: this should have been addressed _ages ago_.
> 
> I agree, the current situation is VERY bad for D as a language.
> 
> I see only one solution at the moment that would (IMO) be fair for 
> everyone:
> 
> *****
> 
> 1) Tango has to loose the claim to be a replacement for Phobos, instead 
> it *has* to be an enhancement on top of Phobos (and *perhaps* merge with 
> Phobos later, but this is a different discussion).

Except the Phobos runtime and garbage collector are inferior to those of 
Tango. Plus the result would not be DRY: there'd be two IO systems, for 
instance. Also, Tango has changes to object.d, I believe, for things 
like stack traces on exceptions.

> 2) At the same time Walter should open Phobos to everyone (that includes 
> the Tango team).

Given this, Phobos would adopt the Tango runtime, which would 
effectively make Phobos an extension of Tango. Except that it would be 
updated to new dmd releases sooner.

That said, a few of the Tango devs do, I believe, have write access to 
Phobos.

Still, this turns the situation from a near monopoly into a monopoly. I 
can't come out with a new and improved D runtime. On the other hand, 
most other languages do just fine with similar (per-compiler) monopolies.