dmd 2.063 beta 5

[Walter Bright]

On 5/23/2013 5:56 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 5/23/2013 5:35 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> What about making it an error UNLESS you pass a compiler flag.  The user will be
>> informed, and the new behavior (which I find useful) is possible.
>
> While that idea has significant merit, I oppose it on the following grounds:
>
> 1. It forces a very abrupt change. We've followed a policy of gradual change,
> giving people plenty of time to adapt their codebase. This does not.
>
> 2. Having optional errors like that leads to unfortunate problems inside generic
> code that tests whether some constructs compile or not.

3. Naive users may see their compile fail, see a switch to 'enable' it, and 
throw the switch. Now it compiles, but fails silently at runtime. This is 
because the new behavior is quite different from the old, and the code that 
relies on the old behavior will most likely need to be redone, not just add a 
switch.