DMD backend quality (Was: Re: DIP 1031--Deprecate Brace-Style Struct Initializers--Community Review Round 1 Discussion)

[Walter Bright]

On 2/19/2020 10:34 PM, Seb wrote:
> And I haven't even mentioned the bottleneck of any major DMD PR needing to be 
> approved by Walter.

Given the current regression list:

https://issues.dlang.org/buglist.cgi?bug_severity=regression&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&list_id=230215&query_format=advanced

I'm probably being too permissive. I'm usually the one who gets to fix them. I 
asked in this forum for some help isolating which PRs caused the regressions, to 
no avail.

Major PRs *should* be regarded with skepticism. For example, I recently fixed a 
regression caused by a 2 or 3 hundred line PR, where the substance of the PR was 
one line and the rest of it was refactoring.

Folks, with PRs, smaller, tightly focused PRs are better. Do not:

1. lump multiple issues into one PR

2. include your favorite refactorings in with it

3. refactors must not change observable behavior

Do:

1. minimize the PR even if the result of the PR suggests a refactoring

2. do that refactor SEPARATELY AFTER THE PR WAS MERGED