State of Play

[Leandro Lucarella]

Walter Bright, el 26 de marzo a las 14:05 me escribiste:
> Tomas Lindquist Olsen wrote:
> >I don't necessarily want a 100% stable language. In fact I don't. But
> >obviously asking for both is just silly.
> >The only thing I'm not happy about is if code that used to work, still
> >compiles, but no longer works. This is where the real problem is and
> >I've seen it several times. MinWin, APaGeD and probably others.
> 
> What do you suggest?
> 
> It's why there's a "last stable version" of D1 on the website. With any
> software package, if you always download the latest version but another
> package was only tested with a different version, it's likely to have
> problems.

This is another problem with D, the lack of a public SCM repository for,
at least, the fronend. Now each DMD release is really a "nightly snapshot"
without any real-world testing (I guess). That's another reason why
"stable" DMD release keep breaking.

If one could download a snapshot every once in a while and give it a try,
most breaking changes should be detected *before* the actual release. Or
maybe alpha or beta versions should be released.

When I see a compiler version 1.041, I see a stable release number, not
a beta, or release candidate or nightly snapshoot, but sadly that is what
it is. Maybe that is a big source of confusion.

Maybe an improvement on version numbering scheme can be very useful in
this regard, even for people looking at D2.0, D2.032 really looks like
a stable release. D2.0alpha032, for example, is really ugly but at lease
looks more like an alpha release =)
D1.041rc2, looks like a release candidate, not a final version, and if it
breaks something, I wouldn't be as surprised as if D1.041 breaks.

Anyway, I will be glad if you take a look at the D1.x series proposal =)
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?D1XProposal

-- 
Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145  104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------