stability

[Janice Caron]

On 25/02/2008, Jarrett Billingsley <kb3ctd2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> If the spec _did_ say the same thing as the compiler, I'd at least know that
>  the compiler was behaving correctly, and wouldn't be asking Walter to
>  backport this change to D1.

I think you're confusing "D1 spec" with "D2 spec" here. D1 arguable
has a spec, since it is stable apart from bug fixes.

But D2 is constantly evolving, with breaking changes happening every
few releases. This evolution is the result of experience and feedback.
D2 /cannot/ have a spec, until some day in the future when it becomes
stable. Whether or not the D2 compiler is behaving "correctly" rather
depends on what "correctly" will eventually be, and that's not fixed
yet. It would therefore make no sense to backport D2 changes to D1
based on some assumption of spec-compliance, when D2 changes might not
even be permanent.


>  But since the spec says _nothing_, I have no idea whether the compiler is
>  correct or not.

Even if it's bug free in D2.N, that doesn't mean it won't change in
D2.(N+1), so you really can't use that as a basis for backporting
anyway.