D versionning

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Monday, July 16, 2012 08:48:31 RivenTheMage wrote:
> On Monday, 16 July 2012 at 06:07:21 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> > Changing names is minute progress, and is too costly in terms
> > of annoying existing users and breaking their code.
> 
> Cost can be lowered - by introducing (semi-)automatic
> refactoring/upgrade mode.
> 
> dmd -upgrade zzz.d
> 
> Compiler can do renames (clear() -> destroy()), insert
> workarounds (if needed), and so on. Easy, fast, no risk of human
> error.
> 
> Of course, in certain cituations no automatic upgrade is
> possible...

If we were doing that all the time, then such a tool would be very useful, and 
it may very well be worth creating such a tool if/when D3 comes around and 
code needs to be converted, but if we continue to change names often enough 
that you really need such a tool, then we're screwing up.

Name changes _should_ be rare. We were only doing as many as we were for a 
while there, because the names in Phobos were quite inconsistent, and almost 
everyone thought that we'd be better off to fix the names and deal with the 
breakage then rather than having to deal with the bad names forever.

- Jonathan M Davis