DMD needs branches

[torhu]

Lionello Lunesu wrote:
> torhu wrote:
>> The problem wouldn't go away, but it would be greatly reduced.  The 
>> serious new bugs in 1.011 were discovered almost immediately after the 
>> release.  Wouldn't it be better if 1.011 was marked as a beta, and not 
>> unleashed on the general public until the core D user community had at 
>> least verified that their apps and libs build with it?
> 
> How's a post in D.announce "unleashing it on the general public"??

The point is that there the announcements and the version numbering is 
exactly the same for all versions, nothing is marked as being stable or 
unstable.

Look at this page and tell me which versions are stable and which are 
not.  The only way to judge a version's stability is by looking at the 
changelog of the succeeding version, and how soon after it was released. 
  No other clues are given.
http://www.digitalmars.com/d/changelog.html

> 
> I'd say: if it ain't broke, don't 'fix' it. Meaning that if you have a D 
> that works for you, don't upgrade? And if you want to play with new 
> stuff, you upgrade.

This would be fine if only a single person were to compile any given app 
or library.  And if all apps/libs that each user has would build with 
the same version.  I have currently eleven dmd versions installed, but I 
wouldn't want users of my libs to need to switch versions if that could 
be avoided in any way.  To be fair, I only use one or two versions at a 
time, the other are for compatibility testing, etc.