Proposal : aggregated dlang git repository

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 2/8/15 11:58 PM, Dicebot wrote:
> On Monday, 9 February 2015 at 07:04:35 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:
>> On 02/08/2015 10:33 PM, Dicebot wrote:
>>
>> > Trivial proof of concept :
>> https://github.com/Dicebot/TestDlangAggregated
>>
>> Great idea. I've been using the following one just to keep up-to-date
>> with git head dmd and Phobos:
>>
>>   https://github.com/carlor/dlang-workspace
>>
>> Ali
>
> Probably about time we merged all those efforts into single standard
> solution under D-Programming-Language ;)
>
> I want to get Andrei/Walter on board first though.

Well I have to say something.

This proposal is a good example of a cultural lore we should unlearn: 
high-churn, low-impact changes. 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/896 is another 
example. Meaning changes with a large surface that rewire vast areas, 
yet result in only dingy improvements.

The main problem with these is they're easy to argue in favor of. Yes, 
an aggregate repository will make certain things easier. I'm unclear on 
the relative advantages and disadvantages, but I have no doubt Dicebot 
has some good arguments loaded already. On that pull request, yes, 
searching the language definition separately is a nice thing to have.

Yet, even after executing e.g. the unified repository to perfection and 
after everything was said and done, we're like... how much better than 
we were? What pain points did we fix? What is the impact?

Probably something that's neither important nor urgent.

Yet we do have matters that are important and urgent. We want to improve 
Phobos' take on memory allocation. Yet not one soul is working on 
RefCounted. Few know even what needs to be done of it. Why? Why are so 
many of us dedicating so much energy to tweaking what already works, 
instead of tackling real problems? Problems that e.g. - pardon my being 
pedantic - are in the vision document?

Don't get me wrong. It's quite likely a unified repo would be nice. As 
would be a separate directory for the language definition. But it's just 
not what we should be on right now.

This culture of riding the stationary bike faster and faster must 
change. We must hop on the real bike and get to pedaling.


Thanks,

Andrei