Proposal : aggregated dlang git repository

Dicebot via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Mon Feb 9 23:17:10 PST 2015


On Tuesday, 10 February 2015 at 06:22:51 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> Well I have to say something.

Great, lets debate :P

> 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.

It is a delicate matter. Yes, spreading over less important 
issues is harmful for focusing on core ones. But the same time 
having many small issues unresolved harms the contribution 
culture as those keep annoying people over and over again.

In this specific case I didn't take go at this because I was 
bored and wanted to do _something_. It was because problem with 
lack of reliable standard layout kept appearing every time we 
wanted to improve build tools and release automation. It was 
because I was annoyed that I still can't test Phobos pull 
requests on Windows machine even despite getting one - because 
setting up a dev environment is just too different between 
platforms.

There is a great value in rejecting or delaying controversial 
changes if those don't improve on core areas. But with no real 
controversy (is there one for this proposal?) it is simply 
rejecting work available for free.

> 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.

It had good enough importance/effort _ratio_. Low-hanging fruit 
how you tend to call it.

> 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?

This proposal directly addresses two of vision document points - 
"Improve the brand" and "Raise participation" by trying to 
minimize entry barrier for D development.

At the same time stuff like RefCounted is a mess. I have no idea 
how to do something useful about it without language changes. I 
disagree with all your proposals on topic. I don't actually need 
solution for that issue in my daily D coding. Do you honestly 
expect me to spend any effort at all on it simply because you 
mentioned that in vision doc? Seriously?

> 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.

I do what I feel needs to be done. You are free either reject or 
accept it. But please don't tell me how I should manage my own 
spare time. If you want cultural change - lead by example.


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