Fixing C's Biggest Mistake

[Walter Bright]

On 12/21/2022 9:02 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> That's what versioning is supposed to solve.

I know about versioning. But our -preview and -revert switches are better, as 
they allow the user to selectively decide which obsolete features they need. The 
request is always "I want X bug fixed, I want to keep the old Y feature, I want 
the new Z feature."

But the people objecting to breaking code also object to using a -revert switch.

Versioning comes with other problems. The most significant is we lack sufficient 
staff to maintain multiple versions.


> Freeze the current
> language as version 2, put it on long-term maintenance, and start a new
> branch as a new version with breaking changes that fix technical debts.

The trouble there is that fixing bugs *also* comes with breaking existing code. 
There is no clean separation between the two.