Phobos and older DMD versions

[Jesse Phillips]

On Tuesday, 6 August 2013 at 14:51:35 UTC, qznc wrote:
> My recent pull request [0] triggered some issue, which should 
> get a bigger discussion:
>
> Should Phobos version N also compile with DMD N-1?
>
> In my opinion it should, because it makes Phobos development 
> simpler. You don't need a self compiled dmd to fix bugs.
>
> However, reality sometimes requires exceptions. I understand 
> that sometimes Phobos uses a feature of dmd HEAD. That is why I 
> said "should", but not "must". ;)
>
>
> [0] 
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/1454/files#r5601514

This doesn't sound related to the problem discussed. Phobos N 
must compile with DMD N, that is a primary requirement. If Phobos 
N compiles with DMD N-1, great but it can't fail in DMD N.

Now, if we step back from the principle of it. It would be good 
to require DMD N-1 to compile Phobos N because it would require 
careful thought in how to do translations. Instead of fixing the 
bug, prepare the compiler to accept the change that will be 
needed in Druntime.

That is of course the armchair statement, I think is something to 
strive for and if we're trying to do the "do what you would do if 
you had a million users," this is probably something we would do; 
where we is a couple hundred of the million users (oh we don't 
have that:).