DMD 0.163 release

[Chris Nicholson-Sauls]

Walter Bright wrote:
> 
> http://www.digitalmars.com/d/changelog.html
> 
> This has all the new import changes in it. That breaks a lot of existing 
> code (like dmdscript), the fixes are simple (adding more import 
> declarations) but tedious.
> 
> I couldn't find a better keyword choice than "static import".
> 
> The renaming uses '=' instead of 'as', 'from', or 'alias' for the reasons:
> 
> 1) didn't want to add new keywords, especially ones like 'as' as I use 
> that as a variable name
> 
> 2) didn't need to add new keywords - adding them should be done only if 
> using punctuation is completely unappealing
> 
> 3) using '=' and ':' is visually more distinct than embedded keywords.

Default private imports are a fantastic thing long in coming!  Thank you Walter.

Also, while I still have some minor reservations on using the 'static' keyword in this 
way, I very much love the new additions to the import system.  I look forward to 
collapsing some long names down to something more feasible, and to yoinking one or two 
functions from a utility module without further polluting my namespace (and without having 
to resort to qualified names when they aren't the summit of elegance).  I am intrigued by 
the exact syntax you settled on, in particular the use of ':' to do selective importing. 
There are just a couple things that I wonder about.

Is it possible to do a static selective import?  In other words:
# static import foo : bar ; // must use 'foo.bar' to refer to it

Or to do a static renamed selective import, even:
# static import abc = foo : def = bar ; // must use 'abc.def', which defers to 'foo.bar'

And I assume there is no way to import more than one module selectively in one module 
declaration, since there is no syntax to terminate the symbol list after the ':' terminal, 
aside from ending the declaration altogether.

One last time: hooray for default private imports!  ;)  You are an amazing individual, Mr. 
Bright.  And D is an amazing language.

-- Chris Nicholson-Sauls