[dmd-beta] dmd 1.062 and 2.047 beta

[Steve Schveighoffer]

--- On Thu, 6/10/10, Don Clugston <dclugston at googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 10 June 2010 18:07, Steve
> Schveighoffer <schveiguy at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > ----- Original Message ----
> >> From: Don Clugston <dclugston at googlemail.com>
> >
> >> That's untrue, for
> >> three reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, the
> version information is
> >> indicated by the date the bug was filed; people
> are almost always using the
> >> latest version.
> >
> > The date filed is not nearly as useful as the version.
> > Quick, compile the code with dmd circa 5/24!  Your
> > assumption is very wrong, people don't use the latest
> > version often because a) it's easier not to update your code
> > whenever a new version comes out that doesn't interest them
> > (new features don't affect them, or bugs fixed don't affect
> > them) or b) the newest version has some other bug that makes
> > it unable to compile/use their code.
> 
> It really doesn't work like that. Most bugs persist for a
> very long
> time, and are easy to reproduce.

Most bugs for what?  The compiler is maintained by one person, so he has control over everything, and can have discipline as to what changes occur.  But a project such as Phobos or Tango has much more instability and modularity.

> Are your comments based on experience with finding them
> helpful?

Yes.  Mostly they were bugs that were filed against Tango, but were actually compiler bugs.  I've chased bugs trying to reproduce them for a long time, only to find that my compiler version was slightly different than the reporter's.

Phobos is more coupled to the compiler version, but dmd+phobos is a big project.  When bugs crop up that appear related to one part of the project, but are actually in some other place, having every part being the same can be critical for reproduction.  Someone working on phobos is not likely to bother to constantly update the compiler (i.e. me), especially when D2 is feature-frozen.  So when something *doesn't* reproduce, the next step is to make your environment exactly like the reporter's.  If the reporter doesn't give you that info, you have to ask it, which is easily circumvented by asking for it on the bug report.  I wished many times that Tango had a field to identify the compiler used.

> My
> experience after looking at many hundreds of bugs is that
> the version
> numbers are not useful at all. Really not.

Then you are lucky.

-Steve