Issues with optlink

[Mathias LANG]

On Friday, 19 June 2020 at 00:54:15 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 6/18/2020 3:20 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>> On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 02:40:33PM -0700, Walter Bright via 
>> Digitalmars-d wrote:
>>> I've run those tests more than anyone, and have not seen an 
>>> optlink
>>> heisenbug.
>> 
>> I think it's because Walter uses advanced quantum technology 
>> that can
>> directly handle quantum-superimposed computation states [1], 
>> so none of
>> these heisenbugs affect him. ;-)
>> 
>> [1] 
>> https://forum.dlang.org/post/mailman.3657.1591403118.31109.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com
>
> That's not an optlink issue.

Starting a new thread as not to derail the original topic, which 
contained valid points.

Optlink has been a pain for everyone on x86 Windows for a while. 
I personally use Linux and Mac OSX, but tried doing some work on 
Windows recently and first think I got was a linker crash.

There have been active steps taken to limit its use / reduce the 
exposure of new users to it, among them:
- Dub defaults to mscoff since v1.15.0, and that has drastically 
improved the UX for new users. See 
https://github.com/dlang/dub/pull/1661 for the many reasons this 
was done.
- Vibe.d recently dropped support for it because they were 
causing crashes / timeout: 
https://github.com/vibe-d/vibe.d/pull/2445
- This was tried in DMD, and you obviously shut it down: 
https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/8347 . I will just quote the 
last post by Manu here: "I don't have the energy to pursue this. 
I do think it's important though."

And yes, they are document, advertised, and have been advocated 
for years, yet you refused to listen to the feedback countless 
users have given.