Quality of errors in DMD

Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Sat Sep 3 15:39:22 PDT 2016


On 9/3/2016 6:14 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> What kind of issue due you see with trying to print some form of information
> when an assertion fails?

Because it's useless to anyone but the compiler devs, and it adds cruft to the 
compiler. And even worse than useless, it confuses the user into thinking it is 
a meaningful message.

It is not. It is a compiler bug. It has meaning only to the compiler developer, 
and hence does not belong in the *user* interface. Let's not pretend the user 
can debug the compiler.


> I would have certainty help me the times I've hacked on
> the compiler and triggered an assertion. Why shouldn't the developers working on
> the compiler getting as much help as possible?

The compiler code is littered with helpful debugging printf's that are commented 
out. I use them all the time. There is no purpose to them if one is not actively 
working on the compiler.




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