D1 to be discontinued on December 31, 2012

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2011 17:22:48 Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2011-12-13 14:52, Don wrote:
> > On 10.12.2011 22:19, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> >> In order to increase focus and unity in the language, we are
> >> discontinuing support for D1 on December 31, 2012. That's more than
> >> one
> >> year away, which gives enough time to D1 users to migrate libraries
> >> and
> >> applications to D2.
> > 
> > I thought we had moved away from these kinds of unilateral decisions.
> > I strongly oppose this decision. In particlar, I find the lack of
> > community consulatation deplorable.
> 
> Apparently not, when Andrei really wants something he just decides
> without consulting the community.

Well, he _did_ say that he and Walter discussed it, so it's not like Andrei is 
deciding this on his own. No, it was not a community decision, but our 
resident BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life) decided it, and he's the one in 
charge of the compiler.

Maybe they should have discussed it with us some first, but I'm not sure how 
much difference that would have ultimately made. Most of the D2 people would 
have been completely fine with it, if not welcomed it, whereas those who use 
only D1 would not only have been against it, but they probably wouldn't have 
been on this list to discuss it in the first place. It's only the people who 
use both which would have been around to complain about it.

Did any D1 user think that it was anything other than a matter of time before 
Walter stopped supporting D1? Sure, it might have been more than a year away, 
but it had to be coming eventually. The main question has been how long it 
would be until D2 is stable enough that there's essentially no reason to 
choose D1 over D2 except personal preference. It's getting close, and with 
this announcement, there's a whole year before D1 won't be officially supported 
anymore. There's a good chance that there's enough time for the remaining 
kinks which would make D1 better to choose than D2 to be ironed out. And if 
someone still wants to use D1 beyond that, they're welcome to. They just won't 
get any further fixes or releases from Water.

I don't know if Andrei and Walter went about this the right way or not, but it 
was coming eventually. And for that matter, when I first read Andrei's post, I 
thought that he meant the end of _this_ year, which would have been far worse 
for D1 users than _next_ year like he actually meant.

On the bright side for those who prefer D1 and Tango, this announcement comes 
after announcements about major work being done to port Tango to D2, since 
it's not only going to become easier to port D1 to D2, but you'll be able to 
use Tango in D2 if you want to (and without having to forgoe all of Phobos in 
the process, since they'll now work alongside each other).

- Jonathan M Davis