Why are the exec* functions deprecated in std.process?

[Lars T. Kyllingstad]

On Tuesday, 29 October 2013 at 20:44:50 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> On 10/29/13 1:25 PM, Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
>> Even if you don't buy my arguments, I think Vladimir's point 
>> about
>> exec*() basically being POSIX specific, and nothing more than 
>> a hack on
>> Windows, is an even stronger argument.
>
> I think that's the weakest argument of the lot, see the 
> rebuttal in my answer to it.

I've rebutted your rebuttal in another post.

>> You are doing platform-specific stuff, so you should resort to
>> platform-specific libraries.  Were it up to me, I'd remove 
>> them from
>> std.c too, forcing users to import core.sys.posix.unistd 
>> instead.
>
> It's Posix, and Windows also implements the family. Not an 
> argument for removal that Windows implements it in a suboptimal 
> manner.

Like I said in the other post, suboptimal is one thing, *wrong* 
is another.

>>> On usefulness: "Objection, your honor" :o). Forwarding from 
>>> one
>>> process to another is an essential part of process control.
>>
>> It is apparently not essential enough for it to be natively 
>> supported on
>> Windows.
>
> That's a good point. Nevertheless there are deeper reasons for 
> that. Far as I can tell functions like fork() and exec() are 
> tenuous on Windows due to the way it's architected, so they 
> favor other ways to go about things. Then they also took the 
> time to implement exec(). No fault there. Just don't make it 
> difficult to get to it.

I've suggested a way to make it easy to get to, but which 
discourages its use on Windows:  Put it in std.posix.

> [...]
>>> I hope I provided compelling arguments.
>>
>> Nope, I don't think so. :)
>
> Then we have a problem. Because I am convinced I am copiously 
> right, and you failed to make any comparable argument to the 
> contrary. To me the only matter to deal with is my being 
> annoying when I know I'm right. (That may, in fact, be the 
> bigger problem because I can be mightily annoying.)

Good thing I'm halfway around the globe, then. :)

-Lars