1.0 ??

[BCS]

 >Georg Wrede wrote:
 >1.0?
 >
 > Does that imply a simultaneous 1.0 for D and DMD??
 >
 > Suppose they were decoupled. Then we might decide on D 1.0 (say in
 > December) and from there go on with fixing library issues,
 > *installing* issues (especially on Linux), and even try to create a
 > package that strives to be as good as Shrink-Wrap, i.e. simply work
 > out of the box, and be somewhat usable regarding GUI development. Say,
 > in March.
 >

I have always thought that it should be done that way. DMD is not D.

Actually, I think it should be D v1.0 RC1. I don't think that it should 
be carved in stone until someone other than Walter writes a complete 
reimplementation of the compiler. Not to belittle Walter (who is doing a 
great job) and DMD (which is a great program), but as it stands 
everything depends on one code base. The DMD frontend. A second 
independent implementation would remove another unknown from the future 
of D. Furthermore, doing a complete reimplementation, would provide an 
opportunity to make sure that the spec consistent and is up to date with 
the language. It would also likely find some more of the bugs in DMD.

<rant>
I know it is to much to ask but, if it were up to me, even more should 
be reimplemented before everything is set in stone. I wouldn't allow 
whoever is reimplementing D to look at how DMD works any more than they 
need to to write the new compiler (which would be written in D of 
course). This would include forbidding them to see how the stuff is done 
"under the hood". The hope would be that they might come up with a 
better way of making things work.
</rant>


 > In the meantime we could polish DMD, interact with the GDC guys to get
 > the two exactly alike, and then maybe even write some example code
 > with more user value than the current printf-Hello-World style
 > examples.
 >

votes++;

[...]
 >
 > We might also promise to not publish a new (stable) version within 12
 > months of 1.0. (This may really be a more important promise for the
 > customers and prospective developers and consultants than we here
 > realize just off-hand.)

I hope you mean no new versions of D. I would hope that Walter would 
still attack the DMD bug list with the same kind of aggressiveness that 
he has shown in the past.

As to an un-stable versions of D, maybe an excremental compiler could be 
made. For example I have been working on a D compiler (after several 
months of off and on work I'm not quite done with the *lexer*, so don't 
go getting all excited) that is intended to be as easy as possible to 
modify. The idea being that it can be a test bed for new features. To 
begin with I plan to  implement the official D feature set. After that, 
new features would be added with versions statements so that people 
would be able to try working with and without whatever features they want.

  As I have no plans to make it fast or put in any optimization what so 
ever, I don't think that there will be any risk of anyone using it for 
any major work.