Move VisualD to github/d-programming-language ?

[Bruno Medeiros]

On 17/09/2013 02:30, Manu wrote:
> On 17 September 2013 01:52, Bruno Medeiros
> <brunodomedeiros+dng at gmail.com <mailto:brunodomedeiros+dng at gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
>     On 13/09/2013 08:46, eles wrote:
>
>         On Saturday, 7 September 2013 at 19:05:03 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>
>             Recent threads here have made it pretty clear that VisualD is a
>             critical piece of D infrastructure. (VisualD integrated D
>             usage into
>             Microsoft Visual Studio.)
>
>
>         Allow me to support this idea, however to suggest that also add a
>         cross-platform IDE/plug-in.
>
>         This is important for the Linux world.
>
>         Current choices are DDT, for Eclipse and Mono-D, for MonoDevelop.
>
>         I would vote for the two for the time being and see how things
>         develop.
>
>         Official endorsement should increase their visibility, their use
>         and,
>         why not, patches.
>
>         In the future, they could also be integrated in the installer.
>
>         I would also suggest to move DDT on github (Mono-D is already
>         there).
>
>         All these, of course, only if respective authors agree. I kindly ask
>         them to provide their POV.
>
>
>     It's not clear to me what any of these measures would help with.
>
>     Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Manu's point with regards with
>     IDE "official endorsement" was more to try to have the D language
>     organization devs (Walter, Andrei, etc.) *use* VisualD or another
>     IDE and understand the issues around it (especially with regards to
>     compiler/debugger integration).
>
>     Just having them make an "official endorsement" of an IDE, or
>     putting it in the DLang github, but without actually using it much,
>     that I'm not sure what it would achieve. The vast majority of other
>     D users will just use the IDE of their choice regardless. The number
>     of contributors to VisualD is likely to not change much either, I
>     suspect.
>
>
> Well, currently the number of Visual-D contributors is exactly 1. I
> don't find it that impossible to see a 2x, maybe even 3x increase in
> contributors.
> I think the most important point though, is that the bugs are in the
> same tracker as all the rest, and in all contributors faces. Which means
> all contributors, regardless of their ...orientation, will have some
> sense of the health of a critically important part of the eco-system. It
> also offers better data to strategy discussions and whatnot.
>
> Remeber, this isn't about 'the vast majority of other D users'. This is
> about the VAST majority who _are not yet D users_. And many of them
> consider lack of VisualStudio, or maybe another full featured IDE
> offering, a hands-down deal breaker. It's also a statement about the
> polish/ready-ness of the language.
> So I think it's in the interest of all D users to know about the health
> of this part of the ecosystem if they want to see the language
> succeed... which will eventually lead to abundance of libraries, and
> tested frameworks that the community today is simply too small to
> develop/maintain.

Maybe, maybe not. The "health" of this part of the ecosystem might 
become more visible, yes, but it won't necessarily mean it will get 
better. The case with DWT is a very close parallel: it got promoted as 
an official GUI toolkit, yet it didn't seem to have a visible effect on 
contributions.

But at this point I don't think it's worth guessing, we'll just have to 
wait and see.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer