D versionning

Adam Wilson flyboynw at gmail.com
Sun Jul 15 17:45:59 PDT 2012


On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 17:36:28 -0700, Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg at gmx.com>  
wrote:

> On Sunday, July 15, 2012 17:23:44 Adam Wilson wrote:
>> I guess I just see it as differing definitions of "stable". For example,
>> dsimcha was here not twenty hours ago praising D for how stable it's
>> become.
>>
>> I think this is a pretty good summation of stable in the community  
>> project
>> context:
>> http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2009/06/what-does-stable-mean.html
>>
>> Note: We meet all criteria for stable.
>
> What I want to see is dmd having fully implemented all of the features  
> in TDPL
> (e.g. multiple alias thises) and sorted out all of the major design or
> implementation issues (e.g. the issues with const and Object). After  
> that, D2
> has been fully implemented, and we can look at adding new features if we  
> want
> to and restricting those as well as any breaking changes that we need to  
> make
> to a different branch which only gets merged into the main branch in  
> certain
> releases.
>
> Arguably, we've been adding too many new features (e.g. new lambda  
> syntax and
> SIMD support), given that we're supposed to be making everything that we
> already  have work properly, but those features haven't been breaking  
> changes,
> and presumably forcing Walter to just fix bugs wouldn't be all that  
> pleasant
> for him. But until we've fully implemented what we have, I think that  
> it's
> just going to slow us down to little benefit to change the release  
> model. Once
> we have, _then_ I'd love to see a release model which promotes major vs  
> minor
> releases and the like, because then we can evolve the language and  
> library as
> appropriate while still maintaining stable releases which programmers  
> can rely
> on for long periods of time without worrying about breaking changes and
> whatnot.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

I think the problem is that in the real world, that state is somewhat  
unlikely. For example, Walter is currently working on COFF support, this  
is arguably a new feature (we already can make programs work on Windows).  
Programmers aren't machines and fixing bugs all day is boring, we want to  
do the fun stuff, in this case, new features. It just so happens that it's  
the fun stuff that makes fixing bugs bearable. I don't think it's fair of  
us to demand that Walter only fix bugs, besides, COFF support is a HIGHLY  
requested new feature, he is just supposed to ignore them?

It is never easy deciding which new features to add versus which bugs to  
fix, but that's the beauty of this model, you don't have to. You just do  
both.

-- 
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/


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