The Death of D. (Was Tango vs Phobos)

[Lutger]

Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:

> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>  
>> This is my view (might not work, but I think it could).  For purposes of
>> simplicity, I'll assume Walter currently develops the Phobos runtime (not
>> that he doesn't, but I'm really not sure :).
>> 
>> Maintenance of the merged runtime would become Walter's responsibility,
>> with your help if necessary (ideas and help understanding, and
>> enhancements if
>> you wish).  Any changes desired for the runtime would go through Phobos
>> (and
>> Walter).  The Tango lib would use the now tango-fied Phobos runtime, with
>> alias imports for existing code (e.g. tango.core.Thread would either
>> publicly import std.thread or would privately import it, and alias the
>> Thread class).
> 
> Based on historical evidence, this doesn't sound like a particularly good
> idea. The current situation ensued for a reason.
> 
> Also, I find that this discussion quite completely ignores the fact that
> DMD is not the only D compiler anymore, and Walter is not the only one
> with a vested interest in the functionality. In fact it looks like quite
> many of the Tango conference attendants wants to discuss the runtime.

How does it ignore it? It sounds rather like the opposite to me: the very
existence of multiple runtimes and the vested interest in those runtimes
(Tango's primarily) are the key reason for unification.
 
> If there should be a common-common (not only "just" compatible) runtime,
> it shouldn't be controlled by one compiler vendor. Note that the Tango
> runtime consists of 3 parts, where only one is compiler specific. That
> particular part should probably be controlled/reviewed by the compiler
> vendor, the rest (GC, threading, other things) should be independent.

I'll admit my understanding is limited, but I'd guess that will lead to even
further fragmentation and non-portability. Wasn't D supposed to be more
portable between compiler implementations than C++ as opposed to less
portable?