On 6/17/2016 7:20 PM, tsbockman wrote:
> It's been on DUB since before this review started, and I plan to support it
> (including incorporating some of the feedback from this thread).

Thanks, that's a good plan.

Ok, where is this list? And where is list for phobos?

Sure, some people are a allowed to pull stuff into phobos. But only stuff that does not introduce new names and Andrei does not veto.

Of course you can not appoint people, but you should have an idea who you think is sharing your overall vision of D. And then you can ask them. Delegating work is nice, but I would like you to delegate power.

On 6/18/2016 1:52 AM, Robert burner Schadek wrote:
> Ok, where is this list? And where is list for phobos?

I've posted them from time to time. Most recently I put a "call to action" in the thread "size_t vs uintptr_t". Many people have come up to me and asked for a list of ideas, I've given them a list, and they did something else, every time.

Off the top of my head, work items for phobos I've repeatedly posted in various forms:

1. eliminate all gratuitous use of gc
2. review all Phobos modules for compatibility with ranges - std.zip, for example, was done before ranges and does not work with them
3. use -cov to improve code coverage of Phobos modules
4. make sure every function in Phobos has an example
5. make sure every function in Phobos has Params: and Returns: sections
http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Phobos_Documentation_-_call_to_action_258777.html
6. replace std.xml with something we can be proud of
7. compile a list of popular modules in other languages and see what we should have
8. create a greenthreads module that works like Goroutines
9. create a module that enables code to be run on GPUs
10. now that D can interface to C++ templates and exceptions, create the interface code to the C++ STL
11. review all of Phobos for @safe compatibility
12. remove dependency on autodecode from Phobos
13. there was recently a thread on Phobos desperately needing a BigDecimal module, someone helpfully posted links to a couple of free C versions, I suggested that someone build a D wrapper for one or convert one to D. Sadly, that was the end of the discussion :-(
14. I regularly ask people to write articles about D, and the situation is slowly getting better, in that more and more good ones are getting written

I've learned to not ask for a gui library :-)

There is no shortage of action items. Just hang out in the n.g. for a bit.


> Of course you can not appoint people, but you should have an idea who you think
> is sharing your overall vision of D. And then you can ask them. Delegating work
> is nice, but I would like you to delegate power.

I do and I do. Andrei, for example, is in charge of Phobos. Martin does the releases. Etc. I do not remotely make all the decisions. I do my best not to undermine or micromanage others who do make decisions, trying to only step in when I felt something has really gone wrong.

-----------------------

What do you want to work on?

On 2016-06-18 12:25, Walter Bright wrote:

> Off the top of my head, work items for phobos I've repeatedly posted in
> various forms:
>
> 1. eliminate all gratuitous use of gc
> 2. review all Phobos modules for compatibility with ranges - std.zip,
> for example, was done before ranges and does not work with them
> 3. use -cov to improve code coverage of Phobos modules
> 4. make sure every function in Phobos has an example
> 5. make sure every function in Phobos has Params: and Returns: sections
> http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Phobos_Documentation_-_call_to_action_258777.html
>
> 6. replace std.xml with something we can be proud of
> 7. compile a list of popular modules in other languages and see what we
> should have
> 8. create a greenthreads module that works like Goroutines
> 9. create a module that enables code to be run on GPUs
> 10. now that D can interface to C++ templates and exceptions, create the
> interface code to the C++ STL
> 11. review all of Phobos for @safe compatibility
> 12. remove dependency on autodecode from Phobos
> 13. there was recently a thread on Phobos desperately needing a
> BigDecimal module, someone helpfully posted links to a couple of free C
> versions, I suggested that someone build a D wrapper for one or convert
> one to D. Sadly, that was the end of the discussion :-(
> 14. I regularly ask people to write articles about D, and the situation
> is slowly getting better, in that more and more good ones are getting
> written
>
> I've learned to not ask for a gui library :-)
>
> There is no shortage of action items. Just hang out in the n.g. for a bit.

Now you're doing exactly as you're telling us not to do. Writing an important post deep inside a thread, with a completely different subject, that nobody will see. Put it on the front page of dlang.org or somewhere visible.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

I created this: https://wiki.dlang.org/Walter_Andrei_Action_List
And PR's to dmd, druntime, and phobos' README.md that points to it.
If you could keep that list up to date, would be really hopeful IMO.
https://github.com/dlang/druntime/pull/1597
https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/5874
https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/4435

> What do you want to work on?

* I'm working on mentoring the GSoC xml replacement (https://github.com/lodo1995/experimental.xml) it is looking really good btw.
* I have https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/2995 in the pipeline which I think will help us to spot performance regeression in phobos and in any other D code for that matter
* I'm also working on getting that PR into unit-threaded as I fear the PR will sit in the queue for some time to come.
* recently I worked on std.parallelism and tried to get all tests run by default. https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/4399 No fun! std.parallelism or at least way the author indented its use, as shown in the unittests, is just broken.
* Then I'm working on my DConf project.
* And I'm reviewing phobos PR's

On Saturday, 18 June 2016 at 10:25:43 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> [...]
> I've given them a list, and they did something else, every time.
>
> Off the top of my head, work items for phobos I've repeatedly posted in various forms:
> [...]

People actually have been working on a lot of the stuff in your list.

The sweeping Phobos-wide tasks like cutting back on GC use, making more stuff `@safe`, improving the docs, etc. is getting worked on all the time. No one is going to go and convert the entirety of Phobos in one fell swoop, because Phobos is huge and there is no individual who has the domain knowledge required to work on every part of it.

Nevertheless, there has been steady progress on those tasks because whenever people work on some part of Phobos (for whatever reason), they tend to also do some general cleanup while they're at it. (This is hindered by the insistence upon splitting work into many small pull requests, though.)

As for the big module ideas - people have discussed work already in progress toward a better `std.xml` and a GPU compute library both here on the forums, and (in the case of the latter) in a talk at the most recent DConf.

There are specific reasons, aired in the discussions, as to why people may not be interested in working on BigDecimal (perceived as being of importance mainly to the finance industry, who is unlikely to contribute anything back in return) or removing auto decode (what's the point, when Andrei is emphatic that the feature itself cannot ever be deprecated?). Even so, those discussions were very recent; it is quite possible that someone around here intends to work on them (or already is) and just hasn't got far enough to want feedback yet.

On 6/18/2016 6:46 AM, Robert burner Schadek wrote:
> I created this: https://wiki.dlang.org/Walter_Andrei_Action_List
> And PR's to dmd, druntime, and phobos' README.md that points to it.
> If you could keep that list up to date, would be really hopeful IMO.

Having it in the readme is a good idea.


>> What do you want to work on?
>
> * I'm working on mentoring the GSoC xml replacement
> (https://github.com/lodo1995/experimental.xml) it is looking really good btw.
> * I have https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/2995 in the pipeline which I think
> will help us to spot performance regeression in phobos and in any other D code
> for that matter
> * I'm also working on getting that PR into unit-threaded as I fear the PR will
> sit in the queue for some time to come.
> * recently I worked on std.parallelism and tried to get all tests run by
> default. https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/4399 No fun! std.parallelism or at
> least way the author indented its use, as shown in the unittests, is just broken.
> * Then I'm working on my DConf project.
> * And I'm reviewing phobos PR's

That is a most excellent and valuable set of projects you're working on!

On 6/18/2016 4:21 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> Now you're doing exactly as you're telling us not to do. Writing an important
> post deep inside a thread, with a completely different subject, that nobody will
> see. Put it on the front page of dlang.org or somewhere visible.

Good point.

On 6/18/2016 8:38 AM, tsbockman wrote:
> There are specific reasons, aired in the discussions, as to why people may not
> be interested in working on BigDecimal (perceived as being of importance mainly
> to the finance industry, who is unlikely to contribute anything back in return)
> or removing auto decode (what's the point, when Andrei is emphatic that the
> feature itself cannot ever be deprecated?). Even so, those discussions were very
> recent; it is quite possible that someone around here intends to work on them
> (or already is) and just hasn't got far enough to want feedback yet.

Actually, Andrei has agreed with the issues autodecoding has, he's just (legitimately) wary of the extent of disruption it would cause by removing it. He is also in favor of fixing Phobos so it is not dependent on it.

(Note that I have fixed quite a few bits of Phobos in this manner already, see std.string and std.path)

On Saturday, 18 June 2016 at 19:49:07 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 6/18/2016 8:38 AM, tsbockman wrote:
>> removing auto decode (what's the point, when Andrei is
>> emphatic that the feature itself cannot ever be deprecated?).
>> Even so, those discussions were very recent; it is quite
>> possible that someone around here intends to work on them
>> (or already is) and just hasn't got far enough to want feedback yet.
>
> Actually, Andrei has agreed with the issues autodecoding has, he's just (legitimately) wary of the extent of disruption it would cause by removing it. He is also in favor of fixing Phobos so it is not dependent on it.

Unless you're trying to say that Andrei has now agreed to deprecate autodecoding, you're not actually disagreeing with what I wrote.

The most enticing reason to work on removing Phobos' dependency on autodecoding, is to pave the way for deprecating the feature itself. The motivation for the Phobos changes is much reduced if the deprecation itself is not planned.

Anyway, I'm not trying to restart the autodecoding debate here (nor to discourage anyone who wants to from working on this), so I suggest you start a new thread if you have something to announce about this issue that wasn't already said at the conclusion of the last debate.