10th Birthday for GDC

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 1/31/14, 12:44 PM, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> On 31 January 2014 01:39, Andrei Alexandrescu
> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>> 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.
>>
>
> David Friedman, I'm in direct contact with him and give both him and
> Donald (the FSF assignments clerk) a nudge over the issue once every
> couple of months.  Whilst David has no problem, he is in the
> unfortunate position of having his IP owned by a company.  And at last
> check, they were still dealing with clauses in the assignment.
>
> As for the codebase, I can say that around 60% has been potentially
> re-written since I picked it up in 2008/2009.

OK, we need to push this forward. If you think I could help, please send 
me his contact information. If you think the situation has reached an 
impasse, I'd say taskify (sic!) the code to be replaced and let's just 
rewrite it. It's all public and visible so the differences will be obvious.

>> 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.
>>
>
> The same could be said with DMD.  I'd never expect someone to pick up
> a 20k codebase in a week, but one can do it in small steps.  In my
> opinion, the best way to get stuck into GDC is to do a couple of
> frontend merges (2.064 -> 2.065 -> future).

Here's where I think in fact DMD and GDC are very different and could 
use a lot more alignment. There are literally thousands of mini-tasks 
for dmd, druntime, etc. documented on bugzilla. Contributors have 
invariably started by fixing something in bugzilla that they wished done 
and figured it can't be too complicated.

Think of it this way: where would be DMD right now if instead of 
bugzilla we'd have a private list maintained by Walter? That's the 
situation GDC is in.

Bugzilla, bugzilla, bugzilla. Know what I'm sayin'?

> Differences between gdc and dmd in the frontend implement are important.
>
> GCC has a strict backend and will ICE at any opportunity it can find.
> As GDC has been well tailored to this over the years to produce
> correct code for GCC.  Things like this in GCC can flag up any big
> problems in the frontend quite easily.  Regardless of whether or not
> DMD compiles it without a hitch.
>
> Having arbitrary changes to the frontend means that not just anyone
> can pick up the latest version of D and slot it in.  Internal
> knowledge of what changes are present in that patch, and why in my
> head after months of study and testing.  It makes merges more
> difficult, setting aside changes in the frontend have a hidden
> knock-on effect in the glue.

I see. The way I'm thinking of this is we can improve the front-end to 
make things easier for you and LDC. Again this takes figuring out what 
discernible steps could be taken and documenting them under bugzilla.

>> 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!
>>
>
> If you can get me in touch with your guy, I could do with a hand in
> having a third party look over my own code reviews, which doesn't
> require any previous knowledge of gdc.
>
> http://gcc.gnu.org/codingconventions.html

Done. Check your inbox.


Andrei