D should disallow forward references

[Leandro Lucarella]

Don, el 26 de agosto a las 17:19 me escribiste:
> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> >Don, el 26 de agosto a las 09:37 me escribiste:
> >>I have a copy of Walter's internal DMD test suite, so I could actually
> >What was the reason not to release the test suite? Copyright?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> >Because Walter has claimed frequently that the submitted patches are not
> >well tested. It would be a huge help for people contributing patches to
> >have the "official" test suite to be sure their patches would be accepted.
> 
> Yes, though you don't need the test suite, just the results. You just
> need to know: "that passed all tests" or "here are test cases which it
> fails".

That would improve the situation, but not being able to see what's in the
test case that failed could be a little.... frustrating. And it would
require some sort of public "testing" facility where people can test their
patches, with could be a little.... hard to implement =)

> It still doesn't guarantee that the patch will be accepted,
> though -- Walter may decide the patch fixes the problem at the wrong
> place.

Sure. What I meant is that a patch that doesn't pass all the test cases
will never be accepted, while one that passes them has a chance.

> >>test all of the patches and be 'patchmeister'(I'm currently responsible
> >>for more than half the patches, anyway).  Maybe we could have
> >>a 'patchdmd' branch in the repository, which I would have write access
> >>to, maybe that would make it easier for Walter to incorporate patches
> >>(it'd be particularly valuable for DMD1, I think). But the last thing
> >>I'd want to do is make a fork of DMD.
> >And you know what? Even if you want, you can't (without Walter permission,
> >of course)...
> 
> Walter's permission is an obvious condition. BTW, that's untrue, anyway: the 
> front-end is GPLed, so a patched front-end can certainly be redistributed. But 
> it'd just be a service to Walter anyway.

Sure, you can also grab the LDC frontend if you want a DMDFE with some
extra patches, but that's not the point. The point is you *can't* do
a 'patchdmd' without permission. And as far as licencing goes, I really
can't understand how Walter can give anyone rights to redistribute a
(modified) BE, if he is not the one owner of the code. If he is, he can
make it free/libre, if he is not, he can't give arbitrary permission to
people. So the licensing/copyright issue seems a little weird for me. But
the, IANAL.

> >Then people ask why it's important that DMD is *really* free/libre.
> 
> I'm one of those people, and I still don't see how it makes any
> practical difference. The backend is extremely useful for compiler
> development, but it's not significant in the long-term development of
> the language. I don't think a 32-bit only backend will be very valuable
> in 5-10 years time.

Ok, you have a point here, seeing the DMD BE merely as a personal tool
for doing FE development might have sense. But it's really a little weird.
That's not how free/open source development usually works. I'm not saying
it *can't* work, but it will be certainly harder to find people willing to
work that way...

-- 
Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/
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El otro día tenía un plan
Pero después me olvidé y me comí un flan