More radical ideas about gc and reference counting

Dmitry Olshansky via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Mon May 5 07:38:06 PDT 2014


05-May-2014 10:16, Arlen пишет:
> On Sunday, 4 May 2014 at 22:56:41 UTC, H. S. Teoh via
> Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On Sat, May 03, 2014 at 10:48:47PM -0500, Caligo via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> [...]
>>> Last but not least, currently there are two main ways for new features
>>> to make it into D/Phobos: you either have to belong to the inner
>>> circle, or have to represent some corporation that's doing something
>>> with D.
>>
>> I'm sorry, but this is patently false. I am neither in the inner circle,
>> nor do I represent any corporation, yet I've had many changes pulled
>> into Phobos (including brand new code).
>>
>> I can't say I'm perfectly happy with the D development process either,
>> but this kind of accusation is bordering on slander, and isn't helping
>> anything.
>>
>>
>> T
>
> There is a lot of truth in what Caligo has said, but I would word
> that part of it differently.
>
> A couple years ago I submitted std.rational, but it didn't go
> anywhere.  About a year later I discovered that someone else had
> done a similar thing, but it never made it into Phobos either.

The key to getting things done is persistence. Everybody is on their 
spare time, nobody aside from the author would be able to push it through.

The process is not "I submit code and it finds its way into the standard 
library". It's rather getting people to try your stuff first and 
listening to them. Then with enough momentum and feedback one would go 
to review queue. Then start a review if nobody objects, then get into 
pass or postpone cycle, then survive the mess as the pull request goes 
into Phobos proper.

Last but not least the burden of getting something into it is minor 
compared to tending the bugs and maintaining the stuff afterwards.

> Of course, it's not because we didn't belong to some "inner
> circle", but I think it has to do with the fact that D has a very
> poor development process.

What that makes of some other open-source projects, that still traffic 
in patches over email :)

> The point being, something as simple
> as a Rational library shouldn't take years for it to become part
> of Phobos, specially when people are taking the time to do the
> work.

Look at it this way - when something is simpler, it makes it that much 
harder to make the one and true version of it. Everybody knows what it 
is, and tries to put in some of his favorite sauce. The hardest things 
to push into Phobos are one-liners even if it makes a ton of things look 
better, more correct and whatnot.

Anyhow I agree that Phobos development process (the one I know about 
most) is slow and imperfect largely due to the informal nature of 
participation. Some reviews were lively and great, some went in a gloomy 
silence with uncertain results without any good indication of the reason.


>
> --Arlen


-- 
Dmitry Olshansky


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