State of the Compiler

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 29 February 2016 at 16:22:41 UTC, Chris Wright wrote:
> One of the important ones is: let's say DMD depended on Phobos. 
> I'm developing Phobos and DMD side by side. I need a new 
> function for DMD, and it would fit nicely in std.algorithm. So 
> I add it to Phobos in a PR, add my code to DMD the next day -- 
> and suddenly compiling DMD is a mess.

That would be the sign of a _completely_ messed up development 
process which would suggest problems way beyond using a standard 
library for writing a self-hosting compiler...

> And that situation is worse. If DMD added a new feature earlier 
> that release cycle and Phobos started depending on it, now you 
> can't compile Phobos with the prior version of DMD, and you 
> can't compile DMD with the prior version of Phobos, so you need 
> to check out potentially several different revisions of DMD and 
> Phobos iteratively to build their next versions.

Err... no, you use a preselected _stable_ version for the current 
non-stable build and archive stable builds you depend on. Of 
course, to get there you need a stable branch in the first place.

Basically all the rational arguments for not using phobos in the 
front end can be turned into arguments for not relying on phobos 
in any major project.