DIP75 - Release Process

[Anon via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 11 March 2015 at 16:35:22 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> On 3/11/15 9:27 AM, Anon wrote:
>> Not to mention, putting extra tools like dustmite and dub in 
>> dmd
>> will only ever benefit dmd users, not those of us who use ldc 
>> or
>> gdc.
>
> That's entirely reasonable. Each distribution has the freedom 
> to bundle whichever tools it finds fit.

My point with that (that I forgot to actually type) was that I
feel there would be better mileage if D tools were packaged up
and provided apart from the compiler. Then the same tools set
can be used regardless of compiler choice, and (perhaps more
importantly) update independently of DFE updates. Some tools
are dependent on the compiler being used, and wouldn't work for
independent distribution, but for the others, it makes more
sense (to me anyway) to make that a separate download.
Of course, installers could be set up to also download that
zip if desired.

By way of example, I'd expect clang-format to be bundled with
clang, but I wouldn't expect (or want) valgrind to be bundled
with clang or gcc. I could however, see the value of a single
download that included valgrind and astyle.

> I would agree it would be bad if dustmite and dub were 
> locked-in to only work with dmd. Is that the case?

Not to my knowledge, but binary releases for most dmd tools are
only available with dmd, which is not ideal. It also creates
a potential ambiguity, since dmd is not redistributable
without explicit permission from Walter, but most of the tools
included with dmd are. Separating the tools from the compiler
allows a very easy line to be drawn between what is and might
not be redistributable.