Source control for all dmd source

[Tomas Lindquist Olsen]

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Frits van Bommel
<fvbommel at remwovexcapss.nl> wrote:
> Sean Kelly wrote:
>>
>> Jason House wrote:
>>>
>>> Over in D.anounce, the LDC devs said they would have an easier time
>>> upgrading to newer dmd (fe) versions if the source was in source control.
>>> Even if Walter is the only one with write access, it's still be helpful.
>>> It's helpful for more than just the LDC folks; that's just the most recent
>>> example.
>>
>> It would be nice to have DMD in version control, but I don't buy the LDC
>> argument.  It's trivial to diff one release against another, regardless of
>> whether version control is involved.
>
> It's probably just easier what a change is for[1] if it's small and
> self-contained, with a description (commit message) of what it's supposed to
> do.
> But that's just a guess, you'd have to ask Thomas Lindquist since he's the
> one that usually merges new frontend versions.
>
>
> [1]: And thus what to do in case of conflicts, as well as what may need to
> change in the backend (if anything).
>

Yes... the DMD frontend is poorly documented, and small self-contained
commits (with meaningful commit messages) would be a great way to
learn a little more, even if just about how Walter does his coding.

In the end there's a lot more to it than just version control. What
I'd really like to see is the DMD frontend made into a proper
opensource project. I don't care about the backend. It's "personal use
only". But right now you have to remove a lot of code to get down to
the part you want, the frontend.

Imagine if LDC was just a backend module that you could use pretty
much out-of-the-box with the official DMD frontend source tree !!

I've worked with a few smaller open source project communities, and
it's just a much nicer way to work than what we have with DMD right
now.

With version control, DMD will feel more like an open source project.

-Tomas