Why Phobos is cool

[Iain Buclaw]

On 25/06/2020 18:25, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 6/25/20 10:27 AM, Petar Kirov [ZombineDev] wrote:
>> The way I see things is that we as a community need to focus on a vetted, well shaped collection of libraries.
>> We need to have process where third-party libraries are able to gain broader support and join dlang-community. Also we need dlang-community to have a healthy number of people who actually maintain the code.
>> We need the leadership to realize that investing just in dmd, druntime and phobos is necessary, but very insufficient.
>> W&A need to stop pretending that Dub doesn't exist. I feel that unless we embrace using code.dlang.org as method of distribution of everything that's currently part of the compiler archive, Dub's limitations will never be addressed and from that the broader community will suffer.
> 
> (By the way just to clarify "A" in "W&A" would stand for Atila. I'm commenting as just one in the community.)
> 
> I'm a bit confused by this argument. So there is the compiler and standard library, and then there's a community-supported library, which includes a copy of the standard library under an improved versioning schema. It's all legal and encouraged by the generous licensing of the compiler and standard library, both of which Walter and I fought hard in the past to obtain and maintain.
> 
> Dub is the perfect place where community leadership can set the tone and organized things as they need to without heavy-handed intervention from above. Several people have criticized "the leadership" for not doing things the way they wanted, so it seems perplexing that leadership intervention is now asked for. What's that nonsense with "pretending dub doesn't exist"? So now they need to take ownership of the community-driven dub as well? Isn't that a bit too much work for a handful of folks in the best of times?
> 

If I was to take some of it at face value, I'd probably turn around and say: you know what, I'm going to drop Phobos from GDC and tell people to get it from Dub instead.

Apart from std.math, there are no differences between upstream and downstream copies anyway (and I could always upstream version(GNU) asm implementations for x86, RISC-V, ...).

It would certainly make my life easier, would speed up both time to build compiler and run the testsuite, and no more worrying about getting the mathlib working on PPC64, or PA-RISC, or M68K, or VAX.  That's now someone else's problem, and I can think of better things I could be doing with my time anyway.

Would people be happy if I did this?  I doubt it.