DMD needs branches

[Nicolas J.]

Lionello Lunesu Wrote:
> 
> I like the idea of branching, but it does the merging/backporting of 
> patches involves quite some overhead, possibly too much for a one-man 
> project like DMD.
> 
> L.

It is true that maintaining two branches involves some more work, but:

1. because a STABLE branch is not supposed to introduce new bugs (in theory), Walter doesn't have to work in a hurry because of possible regressions that create havoc in some users' projects, like he is doing right now.
So he can work more peacefully on new features, as people who work with the bleeding edge versions do expect some broken code, and therefore don't complain (but they can report bugs). 

2. a STABLE branch offers the chance for people to actually contribute to bug fixing. It's hardly the case with a constantly evolving compiler, as one bug fix may just be out of date in the next version. This discourages people to actually contribute to bug fixing.

So this overhead could be compensated at least partly by more involvement of the community members to the improvement of the overall quality of at least the STABLE branch.

For everybody, this would be a huge bonus in stability and quality, not only of the compilers, but also of the whole codebase, since library writers can rely on the stable version. 
The top 5% expert coders will happily work with the bleeding edge evolutions.
But for the rest of us, the language may very well be "good enough" right now, but what may prevent people from engaging into large scale projects in D is no longer issues with the expressiveness of the language or the lack of tools (today code::block  fills the bill quite nicely) than the uncontrolled risks of incompatibilities between libraries.