[Dlang-internal] Regression control & breaking changes policies

[Dicebot via Dlang-internal]

On 12/07/2016 03:56 AM, Dicebot wrote:
> On 12/05/2016 03:15 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> This is a rather blunt hammer and I don't see how it is harmless.
> 
> It is harlmess by a simple criteria that I challenge you to give an
> example of harm it causes. Reverting a regression fix is only case that
> I can imagine reverting is worse than fixing.
> 
>> Reverting it in stable or for a point release, ok. But in master? It may
>> just require a tweak or two. Consider that the PR may fix a severe
>> problem, yet introduce a minor regression.
> 
> THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MINOR REGRESSSION
> THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MINOR REGRESSSION
> THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MINOR REGRESSSION
> THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MINOR REGRESSSION
> THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MINOR REGRESSSION

On a more serious note - not breaking things is much more important than
fixing things. Even if existing issue is severe, the fact that it exists
for a long time means users have a way to mitigate it. You can't make
things worse by delaying it for one release. One the other hand, any
issue that causes existing projects to break has sever consequence for
ecosystem usability.

I am perfectly fine with "any rule must have exceptions approach". But
there has to be at least some basic rule. Productivity of D development
suffers from decision reluctance horribly exactly because there is no
way to say if something non-trivial is OK to merge unless you come and
say so.

https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/6290 is perfect example of how absurd
it gets. There was a simple task of reverting bunch of prematurely
merged pull requests so that their implementation can be improved. Half
a days job at most. And yet one month later we are still arguing and
discussing and considering and doing nothing. How does it even surprise
you after that scope PR doesn't get enough attention?

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