Real World usage of D, Today (was Re: challenge #2: implement the varargs_reduce metafunction)

[Sean Kelly]

kris wrote:
> Lionello Lunesu wrote:
>> "kris" <foo at bar.com> wrote in message 
>> news:ep6c92$2ti3$1 at digitaldaemon.com...
>>
>>> Like, for instance, an updated GC? When did that ever top the list of 
>>> real-world issues for D?
>>
>>
>> I'm often running into problems with the (old!) GC, and the only fix 
>> is to manage memory manually here-n-there, until you end up with some 
>> mixed GC, malloc/free frankenstein code. I surely hope the new GC will 
>> solve my problems :)

Could you explain further?  Is this simply a problem with false 
positives or is there something else going on?

> Yeah, I agree. There's things that each of us would like resolved. For 
> example, phobos deadlocks in the gc when using multiple threads - 
> sometimes only beyond a day or two - and it's been that way since before 
>  last April. But, that affects only a select few people. In fact, it 
> seems I'm the only one who managed to trip it (though Sean fixed it in 
> both Tango & Ares).

For the record, I read through the Phobos code looking for the problem 
but nothing jumped out at me (and the lack of a usable stack trace 
didn't help much).  And the Tango/Ares Thread code is a complete rewrite 
so I couldn't simply submit my version to Walter for inclusion in Phobos.

>  From another viewpoint, lib issues and debugger issues tend to affect 
> the public in general; especially those new to the language, who may be 
> used to the relative luxury of functional debuggers and libs :-D

I've gotten pretty used to debugging via code inspection and an 
occasional well-placed printf since discovering D, but the library 
issues are obviously a major point of concern with Tango in development. 
  There are certainly far fewer of them then there were a year ago, but 
a few major stumbling blocks still exist.


Sean