Experimental Phobos modules?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Wed, Dec 05, 2012 at 06:47:38PM +0100, angel wrote:
> In the Linux community it is called 'staging', rather than
> 'experimental'.
> A module has to be of some quality level to be accepted to staging,
> where it may be reviewed and tested by the more adventurous people.
> From staging, the module proceeds to the mainline, or back to hell.
> In Linux this approach pretty much proves itself.

I like the name 'staging'. Spelling it out in full is also good, so that
people who use it only do so deliberately. Like staging.io for the
prospective new std.io, or staging.graph for a hypothetical graph
algorithms module destined for std.graph, it's immediately clear that
these are experimental/staging modules, not yet official.

It can even be provided as part of Phobos (or rather, part of the Phobos
package, under the staging namespace) so that it's convenient for people
to test things out. To maximize test coverage by actual-use code, I
don't think it's a good idea to make people jump yet another hurdle to
install a staging package. Bundle it with Phobos and let everyone have
ready access to it, with the understanding that APIs from staging will
not be stable, and things may change drastically without warning.
Requiring people to download, install, and configure yet another package
only raises the barrier, and we'd probably get few or no testers at all,
which defeats the purpose of staging.


T

-- 
Ruby is essentially Perl minus Wall.