What remains to be done for D2?

[Don]

Petr Janda wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Can someone please explain what needs to be done (other than fixing
> the plethora of bugs) to call D2 final? And if someone can provide
> an approximate estimate of when?

There are a couple of areas of major missing functionality:
* CTFE should support pointers (upcoming release 2.054) and classes (2.055).
* alias this, inout, safe aren't fully implemented, and will probably 
require language changes/clarifications.
* Built-in struct functions (opEquals, toString, etc) need more thought.
* I suspect that we'll see changes to the modifiers for function 
parameters (in, out, inout, ref, auto ref)

At the current rate of progress I estimate we are about six months from 
having the language implemented (but still with bugs).
But there will still be bugs which can only be fixed by making small 
changes to the language spec.

Phobos is quite a bit further away from being "final".

With regard to bugs: the last release fixed more than half of the most 
important and difficult structural bugs remaining in the compiler, 
including some which had been deferred for years. There are a huge 
number of open bugs, of course, but we are on a downhill run now.

> I would like to switch majority of my programming from C++ to D2 but
> the number of bugs and uncertainty of how exactly will non-garbage
> collected classes work makes me a bit cautious.(could someone please
> explain too)
> 
> Also, how much slower is D2 compared to C++? Will D2 final have
> comparable performance?
> 
> Thanks
> Petr Janda