Help!

[Rob T]

On Wednesday, 28 November 2012 at 13:31:36 UTC, Jacob Carlborg 
wrote:
> On 2012-11-28 13:46, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>
>> Yep. Rails 4 breaks Rails 3 code. Not Rails 3.061 breaks Rails 
>> 3.060
>> code :o).
>
> I've talked about that before. D doesn't have a versioning 
> scheme that makes any sense. It's just a number that gets 
> incremented without any meaning. Except that a greater number 
> indicates a later version. Also changes to the language, 
> compiler, runtime and standard library always happen in the 
> same release.

When people refer to D1, D2, D3, and eventually D4, etc, what 
they should be referring to is a major version upgrade that will 
purposefully contain breaking changes, and will inevitably 
introduce a whole new set of bugs.

Usually increments to a minor version mean increasing stability, 
not decreasing stability or unknown stability!

Major version increments means that breaking changes may be 
introduced on purpose for a good reason, and it may mean new bugs 
will be introduced as well.

The major/minor versioning system has been in use for ages. Many 
people rely on it, including myself. I use different packages, 
that I purposely keep at a certain major revision number, and I 
always happily update to the next minor version, because it 
introduces bug fixes, not breaking changes. I only migrate to the 
next major revision only after it has matured over a few minor 
increments.

Again, sometimes I jump on the next breaking major revision, 
because it's for non-critical work, or for a new feature that I 
really need today. The point is that I can identify what is 
breaking and what is not just by looking at the version number, 
and I can pick and choose which version I think fits the 
stability model for my situation.

In any case, I did suggest re-thinking how a language can be made 
to change in significant ways over time. The major.minor version 
concept may be too simplistic for this, but holy crap, it's at 
least a good start since we don't even have that!

Something has to change, and it has to change quickly.

--rt