DIP75 - Release Process

[Vladimir Panteleev via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 11 March 2015 at 07:32:48 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> On 3/11/15 12:19 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>> What will ACTUALLY change by bundling Vibe with D?
>
> Many people know of D but not of vibe.

Precedent shows that this does not work. Including Dustmite with 
D did not solve the issue that you have to know about Dustmite 
before you can even think about using it.

If you want to increase Vibe's visibility, adding a few links to 
dlang.org will serve this goal much better.

>> What happens if a regression occurs in Vibe just before a D 
>> release? Do
>> we block the release for the sake of Vibe?
>
> Yes.

Are you really OK with this? Is everyone OK with this?

Everyone who does not use Vibe almost certainly is not going to 
be OK with this.

>> What if there's no one around
>> to fix it? We have enough problems with blocking bugs in
>> Dub/Vibe-related components in the dlang.org repo already.
>
> We need to rally support around it.

Precedent shows that this does not work. Regressions have stayed 
unfixed up to and past prior D releases.

>> My question about Vibe API versioning still stands, what if 
>> people want
>> to use an older Vibe with a newer DMD?
>
> They can in the same way they can use an older Phobos. It's up 
> to them to make it work.

Is everyone OK with this? I don't have enough experience with 
Vibe to know how important this is.

>> Precedent shows that Vibe and related components simply do not 
>> have a
>> bus factor high enough to not be a liability if included with 
>> D.
>
> There is one way to increase the bus factor. Making vibe more 
> visible is better for vibe folks and of course for users.

Precedent shows that this does not work. Neither Dustmite nor 
Visual D magically got an increase in developers.

>> I am trying to work with you here.
>
> It doesn't seem so to me. You find easy weaknesses in my vision 
> and pump on them instead of working on making it stronger. 
> That's the easy "but that business won't work, and here are the 
> reasons why" approach. The harder part is finding ways to make 
> it work by overcoming its weaknesses.

No, you're saying that just because I don't agree with your 
immediate goal, then I'm not working with you. I indeed do not 
agree with your immediate goal, but I do agree with the long-term 
goal.

>> We do not have a strong precedent for this.
>
> If we continue to do what we've been doing, we'll progress at 
> the rate we've been progressing. That's not enough.

This is wishful thinking. Precedent shows that this does not 
work. Working force is not going to materialize from thin air 
just because you attract more attention to it.

>> The closest thing we have
>> are things like Dustmite, which are so specialized that they 
>> don't
>> matter in this case, and Visual D, which I'm not really sure 
>> greatly
>> benefited from the exposure - we've covered one IDE among 
>> many, and
>> despite moving the project under github.com/D-P-L, Rainer 
>> remains the
>> sole maintainer. And you know the story with DDox.
>
> Yah, that's a bummer. Yet neither of these is as comprehensive 
> as vibe.

This just means that the problem will be stronger with Vibe. Vibe 
is more complicated, and there will be fewer people familiar with 
all parts of it. Will there be enough to keep it running in pace 
with D?