D roadmap after 1.00

[Sean Kelly]

Craig Black wrote:
> Yes.  Stabilization should be top priority since there seem to still be many 
> outstanding bugs.
> 
> However, performance is a big area that isn't necessarily a "boring house 
> cleaning" exercise.  For example, the most significant improvement to 
> performance IMO would be to make GC precise.  This would require new 
> reflection features in the compiler as it would have to know which areas of 
> memory are pointers and which are not.

An easy fix that should help is to key on element size.  This would at 
least prevent blocks containing elements less than pointer size from 
being scanned (most notably char strings).  In fact, Tango already has 
this behavior by default.  If I had more free time I'd submit a patch to 
Walter for Phobos--it really isn't a tremendously difficult change aside 
from sorting out how the GC interface should be modified to support it.


Sean