Prioritizing bug fixes & improvements to D

[Bill Baxter]

torhu wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>>> "Walter Bright" <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
>>> news:fasudc$1mvc$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>> The problem is, forward references also have a high cost to fixing.
>>>
>>> They also have a high benefit: the compiler will no longer give 
>>> errors (that are impossible to workaround without serious redeisgns) 
>>> on otherwise valid code.
>>>
>>> Furthermore, delaying issues that are difficult to fix means they 
>>> will never be fixed, at least not on any reasonable timescale.  You 
>>> know that with all the new features you're going to be introducing 
>>> that there will be tons of bugs, probably lots of little easy ones.  
>>> Keep squashing all the little ones, though, and the big ones will 
>>> just fester.
>>>
>>> Another one that comes to mind is broken selective/renamed import 
>>> privacy (bugzilla 313/314).  
>>
>> I hate those import bugs too, but are they really preventing anyone 
>> from getting work done?  It's not hard to work around usually.
> 
> It becomes a real problem when porting code from say, C, because then 
> you don't want to reorganize the whole thing to avoid forward references 
> errors.  If you're starting from scratch you can usually fix the 
> problems with some amount of trial and error, but if you're starting 
> with a couple of dozens of files ported from another language, it's a 
> lot harder.
> 
> The problem is that it's very hard to figure out what exactly causes 
> these errors, so fixing them can take a lot of time.  You don't know 
> exactly what causes them, and you don't know exactly why it works if you 
> manage to fix them.  It's just no fun.
> 
> To make matters worse, dmd 1.018 introduced a new forward reference 
> error into one of my projects.  For now, I've just documented that you 
> need to use dmd 1.017 or older to compile it.  Without a simple test 
> case, reporting it in the bugzilla will only get me replies the likes of 
> 'dude, please post a minimal test case, or nothing will happen'.  Making 
> such a test case could take me hours, and if it leads to the bug 
> (regression, even) getting fixed, it's still just the tip of the iceberg 
> when it comes to forward reference errors.
> 
> This kind of seemingly random errors have a really high pain-in-the-ass 
> factor.  Please make them go away.  Or at least document the known bugs 
> and their workarounds.

Oh yeh, I'm totally in agreement that the forward referencing errors are 
bad and need fixing.  I was only questioning whether the import issues 
(313/314) were also in the same category of seriousness.  The errors 
generated because of those issues would generally be pretty easy to work 
around I would think, even if they do make a mockery of module 
encapsulation.

--bb