Numbering compiler error messages?

[Brad Anderson]

On Saturday, 29 March 2014 at 07:34:21 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 3/28/2014 1:32 PM, Brad Anderson wrote:
>> I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point. 
>> I've found VC++
>> error numbers invaluable whenever I confront a confusing 
>> error. There are often
>> examples of what cause the error and how to fix it.
>
> And why doesn't grepping on the text of the error message work?
>

grepping what? Surely you don't mean the dmd source code.

> BTW, I often encounter perplexing messages from Linux, and I 
> just plug the text into google.

Yeah, that's precisely how I solve a large portion of my problems
(both while programming and with life in general). I guess the
important point isn't to have error numbers necessarily but to
have one place where people can read more about an error and
share helpful information about an error. When you google dmd
error messages you'll often get ancient D1 forum posts that don't
necessarily apply anymore and you have to weed through a half
dozen different posts before you find some answers.

Perhaps a good compromise would be for errors that are complex
and can't easily be explained in the terse error message there
could be a url on the end that takes the user to a page on the
site or wiki where they can read more. Then only a subset of
errors, the ones that are particularly tricky, must be maintained.