Moving towards D2 2.061 (and D1 1.076)

[David Nadlinger]

On Thursday, 13 December 2012 at 23:47:56 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:
> I understand that some of you may be frustrated by my giving 
> their needs priority, […]

It's *not* your choice of priorities which strikes me as odd, 
it's that the situations seems like you made an objectively bad 
technical decision for no good reason, and refuse to back off 
after other people have made you aware of the consequences.

In order to make your reasoning easier to understand for other 
people, could you maybe answer the following questions, setting 
aside all the other previously mentioned points (supporting an 
unreleased version, etc.) for the moment?

1. How much work would it be for the guys at Remedy Games to 
convert their codebase from [] to @()?

2. What is your plan moving forward, i.e. how to you intend to 
handle deprecation/removal of the feature?

3. Why is the message you introduced a warning instead of a 
normal deprecation error?

———

For 1., I would guess at most something like half an hour for a 
large codebase where the feature is used pervasively (you just 
keep editing/compiling until there are no more syntax errors), 
which is why I can't quite understand the fuzz you are making 
about keeping the feature. And even if they cannot switch right 
now, as the Remedy guys are obviously willing to use experimental 
compiler versions, can't they just use a patched version until 
they have made the switch?

I'm pretty much in the dark about 2. and 3., but let me note that 
the questions don't even arise if we just remove the syntax and 
call it a day.

Let me also repeat the most important point: If we release 2.061 
like this, DMD will silently accept the old syntax, so your 
decision will actually lead to *more* breakage when the feature 
is removed in the future.

David