Dub use

[Marc Schütz via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 2 December 2015 at 16:50:28 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Dec 2015 09:53:32 +0000, Russel Winder via 
> Digitalmars-d wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 2015-12-01 at 20:38 +0100, Sönke Ludwig via 
>> Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>> 
>> […]
>>> Not currently. dub.sdl is not ideal, because it would lead to 
>>> ambiguities within the dependency graph, but 
>>> dub.selections.json could be extended to support that.
>> 
>> As Mathias pointed out putting the compiler choice in the 
>> dub.sdl file is actually not a good idea. I think leaving the 
>> dub.selection.json file as an automated file is probably best, 
>> it means it is disposable and recreatable easily without fear.
>
> You mean dub.selections.json isn't intended to be 
> end-user-modifiable? I keep getting warnings about deprecated 
> branch dependencies that say I should use a version tag and, if 
> I really want a branch, edit dub.selections.json to make it 
> happen.
>
> (This is mainly for ancient packages from before the semver 
> times, most of which don't work at present.)

IMO it really should be auto-generated only, and fully determine 
the exact combination of package versions, so that it can be 
checked into SCM and be used to reproduce the same package state 
later on on a different machine.

But currently that's not the case, and the deprecated branch 
dependencies are only one reason for it. I think this needs a 
rethought. Ruby's bundler [1] is a system that works really well 
in my experience, and can serve as a model.

[1] http://bundler.io/