[phobos] The @property experiment

[Michel Fortin]

I made an experiment last month: I changed an "#if 0" to "#if 1" in the compiler source, one that was meant to enable proper enforcement of the property syntax. Then I went on an fixed a things everywhere to make everything compile and work.

It turned out to be a colossal task to fix everything that needed fixing (a few things DMD but most problems coming from Phobos and Druntime), and after doing a lot of it I started working on other things and left the project untouched since then.

I'd have preferred to present something finished, but given that I'm not sure when I'll work on it again I though it might be a good idea to let someone else take over (if someone wants to). Even if no one works on it, it might be interesting as a way to see how many things have been relying on the non-enforcement of @property. You can look at the "@property" branch in my dmd, druntime and Phobos forks on github to see what was affected by this change:

DMD:
<https://github.com/michelf/dmd/commits/%40property>

Druntime:
<https://github.com/michelf/druntime/commits/%40property>

Phobos:
<https://github.com/michelf/phobos/commits/%40property>

Status: Druntime changes should be complete, Phobos is incomplete and I think I was stuck on a compiler bug triggered by it when I stopped working on it last month, so there might be still a few things to fix in the compiler.

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/