no-autodecode -- game plan

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 8/19/20 8:40 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Wednesday, 19 August 2020 at 12:23:54 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> On 8/18/20 6:21 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> Why not do it in std.v2021.*?
>>>
>>
>> What do you mean? Have a complete alternative phobos library?
>>
>> autodecoding infects so many other modules, so it would be really hard 
>> to single out only some modules, we'd likely have to make a copy of 
>> nearly everything.
> 
> Andrei's suggestion is a good idea to allow forward massive changes 
> without breaking any existing code.
> 
> The only regret is we didn't think to version it like this from the start.
> 
> A copy of everything is an acceptable cost.

Don't copy everything, alias everything that doesn't need change and 
only add the declarations that should be changed.

The only problem I see with this is documentation. We need to have an 
easy way to define and navigate documentation for different versions of 
the stdlib.

That article by Yegge once more convinced me - we need to stop (thinking 
of) changing and start adding. We've been paralyzed by the fear of 
change while the opportunity (made even better by a nice module system) 
was always there.