D Editions

[Paul Backus]

On Thursday, 16 January 2025 at 01:08:17 UTC, Quirin Schroll 
wrote:
> This. There is something implicitly said in your post, though: 
> Medium-scale breaking changes with non-trivial migration paths. 
> For those, editions shine. A simple example might be the 
> introduction of a new keyword.

"Medium" is what "large" calls itself when it doesn't want to 
admit it's gained weight. If it's disruptive enough to require an 
edition bump, it's "large."

For something like a new keyword, whether it's feasible or not 
depends *entirely* on what the keyword is. For example, we just 
added [`__rvalue`][1] without an edition bump or even a preview 
switch, and nobody expects it to cause any problems. OTOH, if you 
wanted to add a `match` keyword, I do not think you could do it 
even with an edition bump.

[1]: https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/17050