10th Birthday for GDC

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 1/30/14 4:13 AM, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> On March 22, 2014, GDC will turn 10! \o/
>
> This is a great landmark achievement in brevity for GDC, but we still
> haven't achieved in my personal opinion any levity of worthy note.  So
> much to the point I'm beginning to give doubt myself as to how long
> things can continue with a bus-factor of me.

Congratulations!

> Lets talk history.
>
> In late 2010, Digital Mars raised awareness with the FSF to start the
> process of merging GDC into GCC.  Nothing then happened until a year
> later when the copyright assignment/disclaimers had been completed by
> most parties.
>
> More silenced followed for a further year until the first set of patches
> were ready for submission, and over the year that followed resolving
> implementation issues, most were spent waiting for GCC development to
> re-open for feature pulls.  Now a further year has gone by with that
> merge window open and shut and we are once again two releases away from
> seeing any possible inclusion.

Sucks to be an evangelist, eh? :o) The thing is, most of the people in 
this forum are blissfully unaware of GNU's process, milestones, and 
deadlines. I know it's unpleasant to do so, but one thing to do would be 
to overcommunicate. There's a lot to be said about reminding people, 
time and again, about an impending deadline and what they can do to 
help. Messages in with titles like the samples below would make a world 
of difference:

[GDC] Four pulls up for review, aiming at GNU acceptance in three months
[GDC] Help needed: front-end pull, blocks GNU acceptance in two months
[GDC] URGENT: three weeks to GNU deadline, please review!
etc.

This kind of work is as important as the technical work you're doing 
(actually more important right now). It is true that more people would 
see others get the work done and they just download the GNU suite with 
GDC in it. But there's plenty of evidence there are many collaborators 
who are eager to help and simply don't have any information on what 
exactly which rocks to lift and where to take them. You need to be the 
guy coordinating that, and once per decade is not enough :o).

> On top of this, to this day I am yet to hear that the assignment papers
> have been completed by the original author, which would be a major
> blocker in itself.

Who's that guy and what code did he write? If no response, let's redo 
his work. We should not be afraid of it.

> Alarm bells should be ringing, but at times there seems to be an
> indifference from the core community on the matter, as if letting a
> valued D compiler coming up to 10 years of age go awry because of a lack
> of TLC is O.K.

(TLC = tender loving care?)

An increasing number of people depend on GDC for getting work done. 
Including a couple of projects here at Facebook. Yet the simple reality 
is that even if I summoned TODAY one of our engineers with "get on 
helping gdc full time", that engineer would have absolutely no idea 
where to start.

> Before this comes to sound like a death note, please be rest assured
> that my continued contribution shall remain, but some form of serious
> support really is needed to speed up process and development if we are
> even going to achieve any target we have set our sights on.
>
> Lets discuss what we can positively do about the situation and start
> working together to a pillar goal in D's continued success.  Unless the
> more proactive thing to do would just be to walk in-front of that
> morning or afternoon bus instead of board it. :)

Absolutely! And your note is a great breaker of the thundering silence 
around working together to get gdc where it belongs.

That being a large endeavor, there's one time-honored way to address it: 
divide it into smaller steps. So here are a few thoughts:

* Use this forum for EVERYTHING related to gdc, EXCLUSIVELY. Prefix 
everything with [gdc] so nobody will complain about being spammed.

* Keep people posted about ALL upcoming milestones and deadlines of the 
relevant gnu process.

* Find the SMALLEST indivisible step that would help push gdc toward 
integration, file it under bugzilla, and tag it with "gdc". Repeat this 
many times.

* Ask the community for help NOT on a large matter. Ask for help for 
EACH SMALL STEP that a competent person can get on to. I bet many in 
this community read your anniversary message and were like, "wow, 
tricky..." and back to browsing. I take it 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/2200 and 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/2194 are two 
important ones, is that correct?

I'll do my best on my side to help with very concrete bits, i.e. put 
bounties on important issues or have legal contact people for 
signatures. But I need to know!


Andrei