dmd2

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Sunday, January 29, 2012 17:48:04 Stewart Gordon wrote:
> On 29/01/2012 16:24, Chad J wrote:
> > Hey guys,
> > 
> > I know this is a bit late given the deprecation of D1 and all, but why
> > did we name the D2 compiler dmd instead of dmd2?
> 
> I'm not sure.  Was D2 originally planned to be backward compatible with D1?

No. They determined that they were going to redesign the language based on 
what was learned with D1 and make something better. I suppose that it's a bit 
like python 2 and 3 in that regard, except that D1 has never had the user base 
that python 2 has had (python being much older than D, if nothing else). But 
in both cases, the next version of the language is supposed to supplant the 
previous one. It just takes time to do that.

> > It's rather annoyed me when trying to work with multiple D projects of
> > mixed kind in the same environment. Using the same compiler name for
> > two different programming languages seems like a Bad Idea.
> 
> If they are versions of one language (such that version 1 code generally
> works under version 2 just the same), it can be annoying to have to type in
> a version number in order to launch the compiler from the command line.
> 
> But I suppose D1 and D2 are now sufficiently incompatible with each other to
> be considered different languages.  So the compilers probably ought to have
> different names.
> 
> I have both D1 and D2 installed, and while working mainly with D1 I have
> been known to use a batch file called dmd2 to run the compiler for that
> language on the odd occasions I want it.  Now that I'm migrating my
> projects to D2, I may well start doing the reverse....

D2 has always been intended to replace D1. I don't think that Walter ever 
planned for them to coexist in the long term (though he's not against anyone 
continuing to use D1 if they want to). So, none of the decisions (such as 
keeping the compiler named dmd rather than dmd2) really seemed to have been 
made with the idea of promoting coexistance.

- Jonathan M Davis