D needs to get its shit together!

[Jacob Carlborg via Digitalmars-d]

On 2017-06-16 05:53, Mike B Johnson wrote:
> Seriously! D is starting to gain momentum and if things are not 
> stabilized it's going to slow D down.
> 
> 1 ==>> The VERY FIRST order of business is very simple:
> 
> When a new user goes to start using D for the first time, D is a PITA to 
> get working! Don't believe me?!?!
> 
> Just try getting D installed on all 3 major systems for DMD, LDC, GDC, 
> with an IDE, some utilities, possibly arm support(even though it's new 
> and expected to have some issues), etc. The issues really start popping 
> up when you are trying to use x86 + x64. Library issues that result in 
> strange error messages instead of "This compiler is not compatible with 
> the phobos v2.4324".
> 
> And guess what? This happens to regular users too! They either. A) know 
> how to fix them from fixing them in the past or helping others(so it 
> doesn't count because the problem still exists) or B) have a specific 
> setup that happens to avoid the major issues(e.g., just use linux x86) 
> then act like there isn't any problems with D.
> 
> But no one wants to work on the part of D that deals with these problems 
> cause it's boring and most "experts" can deal with the problems in a few 
> mins to a few hours... doesn't seem like a huge waste of time(even 
> though it is, since it's a waste).
> 
> D needs to just work! Library errors, setup problems, IDE integration 
> should just work! It seems the changes of it working are about 75-85%... 
> that IS LOW! It should be 99%. (And I'm talking across the board)
> 
> DMD, LDC, GDC, Visual D, Coedit(or whatever the other main IDE's are), 
> the utilities(Dustmite, DFormat, etc) should all just work seamlessly 
> and without hassle with each other.
> 
> What is the main problem? It's very simple: The way the paths are stored 
> and retrieved is ancient and prone to bugs and it seems there is no 
> clear cut way on how to get everything to find everything else. Also, 
> versioning is not always there so even if the paths are right, the files 
> in them may not be!
> 
> Multiple versions should be able to exist side by side(since D is ever 
> changing and sometimes new versions simply don't work like they should, 
> then downgrading starts causing problems).
> 
> 
> Solution Ideas:
> 
> This is a simple problem that needs to be fixed. The installer needs to 
> be updated to act as more of a package manager(a graphical one for us on 
> windows) that has versioning checks and such in it. It doesn't have to 
> be fancy, but should do a bit more work than the current on which is 
> basically more trouble then just compressing the zip and editing sc.ini 
> by hand.
> 
> 1. A unified path/directory layout that is unambiguous and every D app 
> can rely on.
> 
> e.g.,
> 
> \Dlang\Compilers\DMD\v2\73.01  (the v2 stuff hence forth replaced with 
> <version>
> \Dlang\Compilers\DMD\v2\main <- a junction/link to the current version, 
> usually the latest
DVM [1] is doing some of this.

[1] https://github.com/jacob-carlborg/dvm

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg