Which patches/mods exists for current versions of the DMD parser?

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 8 September 2014 at 23:48:54 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> On Monday, 8 September 2014 at 23:39:17 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
>> Because original post had no learning context at all. I would 
>> gladly support initiative to provide more example-based 
>> tutorials for DMD contribution. Or any call for feedback based 
>> on existing patches. But it has nothing like that, instead 
>> focusing on "here is what I like to change in D so I keep 
>> local patches it" side of things. And this is really bad.

There may not yet be a learning context for the overall 
community, but there is for the small group of people who want to 
experiment with the different syntax that they've come up with.  
They may find that their syntax changes don't work as well as 
they thought and abandon them.  A bunch of them may find one 
particular syntax change or addition to be very useful and push 
for it to be included in the mainline frontend.  We won't know 
any of this till they experiment and talk to each other.

>> Nothing is perfect and freedoms of open source come with their 
>> own drawbacks. I still find the benefits worth it but that 
>> doesn't mean that does mean that drawbacks are to be liked. 
>> Sometimes social aspect can be used as a counter-measure of 
>> technical flaw.
>
> To stress this point a bit more - constant bikeshedding is 
> already one the major problems with D development culture. 
> Everyone has his own opinion about the best syntax sugar or key 
> features missing. One thing I respect established DMD 
> contributors for is that they are capable of prioritizing the 
> bigger picture over own preferences, despite the fact there is 
> no one actually defining that bigger picture. If anything, I'd 
> much more appreciate a real full-blown fork with a different 
> vision (there are actually few already present) than 
> encouraging a fragmentation over trivialities.

But not everyone wants a full fork, they just want to tweak the 
syntax to best suit their preferences.  One of the things I like 
about D is how it uses the old C-style syntax, so I don't have to 
rewire the C-style parser in my head every time I read D code.  
Others have different parsers in their heads however. ;)

I've been thinking for some time that the solution to avoid 
source code formatting arguments is to have a formatter only show 
you source in the format you prefer, whether tabs over spaces or 
egyptian braces.  Perhaps the same is possible for syntax to a 
large extent, ie you download D source and your editor 
automatically runs it through a syntax translator so that you see 
the syntax you prefer.  This doesn't have to be part of the 
compiler, it can be done by other tools, though perhaps such 
translation tools would likely be built on the DDMD frontend.

Perhaps this is a first step in experimenting with such syntax 
translation, or maybe it doesn't go anywhere.  Let's not worry 
about fragmentation because of some small experiments.