Phobos 3 Discussion Notes - 02-01-2024

[Adam Wilson]

On Friday, 2 February 2024 at 19:39:34 UTC, Lance Bachmeier wrote:
> On Friday, 2 February 2024 at 18:57:48 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
>> I cannot argue strenuously enough against putting the 
>> packaging system in to the compiler directly. Not only will it 
>> balloon the build times by orders of magnitude, it is a 
>> serious violation of separation-of-concerns. The compiler 
>> should concern itself with compiling code and nothing else. 
>> The compiler is the wrong place to be handling third-party 
>> packages, that is properly the venue of the build system.
>
> I responded to the other comment, but I'll give the same 
> answer. What I'm proposing doesn't have anything to do with the 
> packaging system, Dub, or any of that. The only thing the 
> compiler would have to know is how to download the source files 
> of a package if they haven't already been downloaded.

But that's not true is it? How does it know which versions of the 
package are acceptable? Which of the acceptable versions does it 
pull? How does it handle the packages' dependencies? You simply 
cannot have the compiler pull a package without going through the 
entire dependency resolution process. Which means you're building 
DUB into DMD. Compilers are not package managers. I've asked 
Walter about this idea before and the reception was ... not 
positive, so probably best to just drop it.

>> People always say there are good reasons, but are light on 
>> actual reasons. Saying that Phobos has a high bar is not 
>> itself a reason so much as an excuse to not make the effort.
>
> A sufficient reason is that I know how things get done around 
> here, and an updated Phobos with these additions will 
> optimistically be released in 2032. Most of the work has 
> already been done. Why not reuse it?

That's not a reason. You're saying that you know what the reason 
is, that you're not going to state the reason, but that your 
special knowledge is so perfect that you can confidently state a 
ridiculous timeline as fact? I would suggest that you might want 
to consider how superlatively arrogant that sounds. DConf 2024 is 
probably a stretch, but sometime in 2025 is probably realistic, 
unless the money floodgates open and time can be purchased, but 
I'm not holding my breath for that outcome.

> It's been eight months since I proposed a simple solution to 
> the problem that library writers have to support too many 
> compiler releases. Label some compiler releases as not being 
> supported by library writers. It would have solved the problem 
> fully and it could have been done by the end of the day. 
> Obviously we couldn't do that. Instead we got editions. Eight 
> months later, we still don't have an initial proposal, and the 
> problem for library writers continues.

That is pretty much where this is going to end. Walter and I 
discussed tying Phobos releases to Compiler Editions, and he was 
amenable to the idea, his only sticking point was to not use 
"Editions" to describe Phobos, and "Versions" or "Releases" works 
just fine for our purposes. I would expect to see Phobos 3 land 
with the first Edition. Both of which I would expect in 2025.

I am sorry to hear that it's not getting there as fast as you 
want it to, but that is the nature of volunteer projects, so 
unless you're willing to step up and help out, it's going to 
happen at pretty much whatever pace the rest of us can afford. 
But don't expect much sympathy when you're whining about a 
problem you're not doing anything to help solve.

>> Under my watch (if the community doesn't kick me out) Phobos 
>> will move faster. And yes, there might even be more bugs that 
>> escape. My plan is to use the monthly(Atila?) releases between 
>> the major roll-up releases mentioned in my original post to 
>> catch them before they get to the wider population.
>
> I hope that's true. It's hard to change the culture of any 
> organization, especially one built on volunteer labor.

Yes and no, so long as the primary volunteers working on a 
specific piece stay the same then yes, expect similar results. 
But change out the personnel and I would expect the results to 
change. This is also true in a for-profit corp, but to a lesser 
degree, as volunteers are usually far less restricted by onerous 
policies.

If I run Phobos development, I will run it differently. Walter 
has asked that I not go crazy, but so far everything I've talked 
about has been met with some variant of "that's ... different" so 
skepticism yes, but so far Walter and the DLF have been willing 
to extend me that latitude.