standardization of D

[Daniel Keep]

Peter C. Chapin wrote:
> "David B. Held" <dheld at codelogicconsulting.com> wrote in
> news:evbaso$2jlr$1 at digitalmars.com: 
> 
>>> Ideally once 1.0 was released there should have been a fork in the 
>>> release schedule for D. Bug fixes to 1.0 could be provided separately
>>> from language enhancements leading toward 2.0 (or whatever). That way
>>> people interested in coding to the 1.0 "standard" could get a fixed 
>>> compiler without the "clutter" of new features.
>> This is a pretty important point, and more people should complain
>> about this.  It does dilute the utility of having a 1.0 release.
> 
> Perhaps the v1 switch mentioned in another post addresses this. I
> imagine that v1 does not turn on old bugs. Is the latest documentation
> clear about what features are in version one and what features have been
> added or changed since? 
> 
> Perhaps it's time for me to upgrade. :-) It looks like there have been
> quite a few bug fixes. 
> 
> Peter

As far as I understand it, throwing -v1 disables any features that would
change the meaning of your code, and changes the GC back to its v1.0
behaviour.

However, the caveat here is that it does *not* disable features that
don't change the meaning of your code.  For instance, compile-time
function evaluation was added post-1.0, but is not affected by -v1.  The
reasoning behind this is that CTFE allows you to use non-constant
expressions where you previously couldn't.  Ergo, if your code was
written for v1.0, then it couldn't have had any of these expressions,
thus it doesn't change anything.

Or something like that :)  However, I do think that the D docs should
explicitly mark things that have changed since 1.0, possibly even adding
a strict version of -v1 that completely disallows new features so that
people can use the latest compilers to write v1.0-compatible code (and
actually make sure that it will work!).

	-- Daniel

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