DMD 1.030 and 2.014 releases

[Chris R. Miller]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> Sean Kelly wrote:
>> == Quote from Walter Bright (newshound1 at digitalmars.com)'s article
>>> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>>> Any chance we'll be getting a backport of the fix to bug 493 in DMD
>>>> 1.031?   [ http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=493 ]
>>> I understand your point, and I have mixed feelings about it. The trouble
>>> is, it isn't a stable target if it gets language changes, and everyone
>>> has a different idea on what should be moved from 2.0 to 1.0.
>>
>> I'm not sure I understand.  Could you please explain why this issue is
>> a language change and not a bug?  The ticket was certainly submitted
>> well prior to D 2.0's release.
> 
> I think we just need to have a D1.1 release.  That would make everyone 
> happy.  Like Miles just said, basically.

Perhaps just using D2 as a testing version where new features are 
debugged before they're merged onto D1?  That might even be better, so 
that library makers have an opportunity to see a new feature coming in 
the future.

> The majority of available code right now is D1 only.  So if you don't 
> want to reinvent lots of wheels, your best bet is D1.  As most everyone 
> knows, Tango is D1 only.  Probably the majority of long-timers here are 
> still D1 only simply because if you have lots of code that works, moving 
> all of it to an unstable D2 is not a very compelling proposition.
> 
> Let me put it this way.  I don't have the time or really the interest at 
> this point to get my libs (OpenMeshD, Multiarray, Luigi) or the libs I 
> depend on (DWT and Tango via that) updated to D2.  And beyond my dsource 
> libs I have probably about an equal amount of application code written 
> in D1.  I think probably a number of folks in the Tango team are in the 
> same boat, and probably various others who got started with D1 and have 
> been enjoying using it.

I know there was an experimental branch a while back that was supposed 
to have worked with D2.  I don't know if it's still maintained.

> So does it make sense to leave this demographic of heavy D users behind 
> with an aging feature set?
> 
> Ugh, I don't think I'm saying this well at all, but I can't spend any 
> more time on this email, because I have to get back to my actual 
> full-time job (writing D1 code, ATM).  Basically to sum it up, it seems 
> to me like current development priorities neglect some of the most loyal 
> D users, those who have been using it and writing large-ish libraries 
> since D0 days.  A backward-compatible features-only D1.1 release would 
> serve that, IMHO, important demographic.

Perhaps a Debian-like system, with an experimental, unstable, testing, 
and stable branch?  New stuff can be introduced in experimental, 
debugged to unstable, and then people can debate whether they like it or 
not as it phases from there into testing and finally stable.  Hopefully 
it'd slow down the rate of new compiler releases on the stable line, and 
make the changes between releases smaller, which would benefit library 
makers.

I'm not saying its the only system, or even the best, but if "the 
system" is going to change (which seems a mighty big assumption to me), 
it's something to at least consider.

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