Finalizing D2

[Robert Clipsham]

Jason House wrote:
> Andrei has indicated that the current plan is to finalize D2 when his
> book comes out.
> 
> Given this, I'm interested in what _community_ activity should be
> done as part of this.
> 
> Should there be a formal review and polishing of the D spec? More
> than just criticizing faults, people should submit patches or open a
> discussion of what something means. Unimplemented features should be
> clearly marked or removed.

I personally think this is a must before D2 is declared as stable. I 
don't see how it is possible to call a language complete/stable without 
a complete specification. We don't want D2 to end up in the state D1 is, 
where it's 'stable', but the spec is incomplete so there are breaking 
issues which won't be fixed as the language is 'stable'.

> Should the final freezing of D2 be delayed until major D1 libraries
> port to D2? I'm mostly thinking of Tango, but I bet there are others.
> It may even be good if major libraries could use a Phobos-compatible
> license and become part of the releases by digital mars.

I think not. As long as dmd2 goes through a beta/release candidate phase 
I don't think that this will be an issue.

> Can we generate a bugfix most wanted list? The formal list could
> inspire patches by motivated community members. There should be a
> quality requirement and a review process for submissions.

This is what the voting system in bugzilla is for!

> To do this, we only need coordinators and a willingness from Walter
> to promptly handle all the patch submissions. (I don't care if Walter
> delegates, but it's tough to get motivated to do work if there's no
> promise for using the output of one's hard work. Walter should also
> be able to use a red pen on the most-wanted list before the tasks are
> given out.

I don't care how it happens, as long as it does. I think as long as 
there are no blocker bugs eg #340 at the time of the first stable 
release, or any other bugs that will cause breaking changes to fix, it 
should work out alright.

> Thoughts?

My main thought is that this is a bit early to be thinking about this. 
D2 is still in alpha, with lots of feature and bug changes in each 
release. Until its feature set begins to settle I don't think it is too 
important to think about how to manage a release. When we get to that 
stage, I think as long as there is a point of feature freeze, where:

  * All remaining major bugs are worked out (possibly across a few releases)
  * The spec is cleaned up, updated and completed
  * We have this discussion, and make sure the members of the D 
community are happy with the language, happy their libraries/apps will 
port well etc

Then D2 will become a major success!