'exp' vs 'std'? Forked: Vote for std.process

[John Colvin]

On Friday, 12 April 2013 at 14:27:25 UTC, Manu wrote:
> On 13 April 2013 00:04, Jesse Phillips 
> <Jessekphillips+d at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Friday, 12 April 2013 at 06:25:10 UTC, Manu wrote:
>>
>>> I see this pattern where something is designed, discussed, 
>>> and then voted
>>> into phobos. At this time the design looks good on paper, but 
>>> there is
>>> very
>>> little practical experience using the library.
>>> The problem then is, once accepted, people start using it, 
>>> and at some
>>> point some issues are found, or ideas for improvement are 
>>> made based on
>>> user experience, but the module can no longer be touched due 
>>> to the
>>> general
>>> phobia of making breaking changes...
>>>
>>
>> I think this needs to happen prior to the formal 
>> review/voting. I would
>> say it should be a precursor to starting the official review, 
>> however this
>> would raise the bar too high for things like Jacob's 
>> Serialization library;
>> he has a working library, but it isn't ready for Phobos and it 
>> would be
>> silly to require the translation prior to approving it for 
>> Phobos.
>>
>> How we choose to add to the exp module would need some 
>> consideration.
>>
>
> I would say, everything, bar nothing.
>
> The serialisation library is a good example. It's a complicated 
> system, and
> it has some history already, offering some confidence from the 
> start.
> Experience might suggest that it's more-or-less acceptable into 
> phobos.
> It's obviously seen a few projects, but once something is 
> accepted into
> phobos, I think it's fair to anticipate its usage to increase
> significantly, and in many different kinds of projects.
> As an independent library, it might be evaluated by a potential 
> user, and
> found not to satisfy the requirements for some reason... they 
> move on and
> continue looking at alternatives, nobody's the wiser. Once it's 
> in phobos,
> there's a temptation, even an encouragement to use it because 
> it's
> 'standard'. At this point, it may be found that the project it 
> wasn't
> suitable for could be worked with some relatively minor 
> changes, which
> should be made, and the library becomes more useful and 
> robust... phobos
> doesn't support this pattern at the moment.
>
> I maintain the position that it needs at least a year in the 
> real world
> before you can truly be confident in it. New things shouldn't 
> be barred
> from post-release tuning on account of "omg it's a breaking 
> change!".

I strongly agree with this.

There needs to be a middle step between the wild-west of 
independent libraries and the strictly controlled world of 
standard library.