DMD svn and contract inheritance

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Jason House wrote:
> Walter Bright Wrote:
> 
>> Robert Clipsham wrote:
>>> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>>>> Thanks for finally taking this way, Walter =)
>>>> 
>>>> http://www.dsource.org/projects/dmd/timeline
>>> Now that DMD is under version control it should be fairly easy
>>> for me to adapt the automated build system used for ldc for dmd.
>>> I can set it up to automatically build dmd after a commit, and
>>> run dstress/build popular projects and libraries, even package up
>>> dmd for "Nightly" builds and maybe even post the results to the D
>>> newsgroups/IRC channels.
>>> 
>>> If you'd be interested to see this Walter, let me know what
>>> exactly you want automating/how and where you want results and
>>> I'll see about setting it up for you.
>> The problem is if some package fails, then I have a large debugging
>>  problem trying to figure out unfamiliar code.
> 
> With small commits to dmd, it should be trivial to know what small
> change in dmd caused a user observable change in behavior. If things
> look good on the dmd side, I'd really hope the code authors would
> help with debugging their code.
> 
> Knowing of a failure within an hour is way better than finding out a
> month later.
> 
> BTW, such regression tests work much better when all failing tests
> can be identified. It can help with figuring out patterns. Stopping
> on the first failure can be somewhat limiting, especially if the
> failure will stick around for a week.

We clearly can't define the language around a best-effort kind of flow 
analysis. I consider Walter's extra checks during optimization a nice 
perk, but definitely not something we can consider a part of the 
language. The language definition must work without those.

Andrei