[dmd-beta] D 2.062 beta

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Tue, 12 Feb 2013 02:47:17 -0500
Nick Sabalausky <bus_dmdbeta at semitwist.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Feb 2013 16:32:43 -0800
> Walter Bright <walter at digitalmars.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > On 2/10/2013 4:18 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> > > On 2/10/13 2:37 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> > >> These things make me nervous - they are complex and when they go
> > >> wrong it can be baffling. Is it really a problem to have the user
> > >> simply edit the file to match his system?
> > >
> > > Not sure how complex the script is, but generally asking users to
> > > edit makefiles to match does not scale well at all. IMHO there's a
> > > sort of goodness hierarchy when it comes to scripting:
> > >
> > > 1. one command that does everything, e.g. "./world" or "make
> > > world"
> > >
> > > 10. one command with arguments, and the exact arguments depend on
> > > the system, e.g. "make DMD_HOME=/usr/bin/dmd MODEL=64"
> > >
> > > 100. asking the user to edit configuration files by hand in order
> > > to get things done
> > >
> > > 1000. manual with a recipe with steps for getting things done
> > >
> > > 10000. folklore on how to get things done
> > >
> > > There's a big drop in automation from one level to the next, and
> > > in particular there's a surprising drop from the command to the
> > > command with specific parameters.
> > 
> > 
> > The general difficulty is one I've had with MS tools from the
> > 1980's: they change in unpredictable ways from release to release,
> > and a *lot* of time gets wasted trying to deal with multiple
> > versions and the endless calls for help about it not working with
> > some random new version. We see this in a smaller way with the
> > evolution of Apple's OSX tools - it's constant breakage. Linux
> > tends to be pretty stable from year to year.
> > 
> > Instead of being terribly clever about it, having a simple edittable
> > file is at least easier to support.
> 
> Having a simple editable file is great to have as a backup in case
> things do go wrong or someone wants to do something manually, but that
> shouldn't preclude making sure things normally "just work" when they
> can reasonably be made to do so.
> 
> People expect anything automatable to be automated. Manual
> configuration is sooo "90's linux".

I'll put it another way. We have two options:

A. Make Win64 work out-of-the-box for the vast majority of people.
A rare handful might occasionally need manual editing.

B. (The current state) Make Win64 NOT work out-of-the-box for large
numbers of people. Force many, many more people to do manual editing.

I can't imagine why B would ever be deliberately chosen as a better,
preferable idea.

I can understand it not getting into this release, but objecting to the
whole idea of "let's NOT make so many people edit conf files to make
Win64 work" is just plain silly.