stability

[Bill Baxter]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>> I think Walter is doing a pretty good job of fixing bugs with D1, but 
>>> still there are a few instances where he has seemed a little too 
>>> eager to classify a fix as an enhancement, apparently so as to avoid 
>>> having to port it to D1.
>>
>> That isn't true at all. "Porting" changes to D1 is trivial, since the 
>> code is about 98% common. The problem is there is often not a clear 
>> distinction between a bug and an enhancement, and D1 cannot be a 
>> stable language if it keeps getting enhancements.
> 
> If it's so easy to backport changes then why not create a 1.5x series of 
> releases which are D1.x + non-breaking changes from D2?  I had figured 
> the reason for not doing so was that it would take too much time.  Or is 
> it the other stuff that takes too much time?  (Maintaining a separate 
> version of all the web pages, etc.)

Well, I guess there is the issue with making the Cartesian product of 
{D1,D2} x {DMD,GDC} x {Phobos,Tango} even more confusing.  Which would 
not be good.

So I'll just reiterate that I wish D1 were still getting 
backwards-compatible changes -- at least until D2 is so stable that even 
Tango supports it.  That's the timeframe in which I believe D1 should 
have become frozen.  Not the minute D2 was forked.

--bb