Phobos 3 Discussion Notes - 02-01-2024

[Paul Backus]

On Monday, 5 February 2024 at 14:38:56 UTC, Atila Neves wrote:
> On Saturday, 3 February 2024 at 12:53:34 UTC, Paul Backus wrote:
>> I think the right approach here is to try to make code 
>> BetterC-compatible when we can, and to at least keep BetterC 
>> compatibility in mind as a "nice-to-have" goal (but not a 
>> requirement) when doing API design. For example, if the only 
>> thing keeping a function from being BetterC-compatible is that 
>> it uses the GC to allocate memory for an error message, it's 
>> probably worth a little bit of extra effort to either get rid 
>> of that GC dependency, or provide a `version (D_BetterC)` 
>> alternative.
>
> I think our goal is to make `-betterC` obsolete. As in: if you 
> don't use the feature, you don't pay for it, and it's implicit.

This is more of a goal for druntime than Phobos, but yes, agreed.

Even in the 100% pay-as-you-go world, I think we'll still want 
Phobos APIs to avoid depending on (and paying for) more druntime 
features than they really need to.