On 12/29/2017 5:40 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> [...]

PRs to fix bugzilla issues get submitted every day. I don't see a better way. I can't monitor every forum, I rely on you and others to do so and submit the issues.

Creating a bugzilla account takes a couple minutes. It is enough friction to serve as a reasonable filter against spammers and junk postings.

It's not like we have a shortage of bugzilla issues and are wondering what to do next.

It's working well enough for those who care enough to make an effort.

On 12/29/2017 7:07 PM, IM wrote:
> They start writing some code, and eventually they hit one of those unhelpful compile error messages, which could indicate one of the following:
> - An error in the engineer's knowledge of the language which the compiler didn't help to understand what it is so that s/he goes to look it up.
> - A bug in Phobos.
> - An actual compiler bug or inconsistency.

I'm sorry, there is literally nothing I can do with that. To get action, you need to be specific.

On Friday, 29 December 2017 at 22:05:31 UTC, I Love Stuffing wrote:
> Also, for a mature D, some damn collections. Queues, Stacks, Deques, etc...

std.container.dlist (https://dlang.org/phobos/std_container_dlist.html)?

On Saturday, 30 December 2017 at 07:30:39 UTC, Elronnd wrote:
> On Friday, 29 December 2017 at 22:05:31 UTC, I Love Stuffing wrote:
>> Also, for a mature D, some damn collections. Queues, Stacks, Deques, etc...
>
> std.container.dlist (https://dlang.org/phobos/std_container_dlist.html)?

The queue or stack usage is not obvious at all. One would expect something like stack.push, stack.pop or queue.enque, queue.deque and may be a peek(). Instead one will get 33 functions that can be used with a doubly-linked list.

On Friday, 29 December 2017 at 22:05:31 UTC, I Love Stuffing wrote:
> On Friday, 29 December 2017 at 09:46:05 UTC, JN wrote:
>> AFAIK Rust doesn't have templates, but generics. Generics usually have much cleaner error messages because they are mostly used for generic functions and classes, meanwhile templates can do that too but much, much more, but when they break, you get entire paragraphs of template errors.
>
> Templates are bad because they write code for you. And it's that code you don't write that could have errors. It's a double edge sword.
>
> Also, for a mature D, some damn collections. Queues, Stacks, Deques, etc...

Yes, it's the same issue in C when using complicated macros. You have to do all substitutions by hand to understand the real error message. D templates have more information so there's hope to get a better resolution of the error cause.
But, the error message thing is a double edge sword, the more information is given the more difficult it gets to quickly find what the issue is.
Again to illustrate with my C experience (sorry I'm paid for programming C, D is hobby that I try to sneakily introduce). The gcc 4 error messages were simple 1 lines errors, from gcc 5 on they introduced the multi-line errors with positioning like in that Rust example above. At the beginning I was quite happy with that as the error messages are so much more detailed, but now after some time, I find them really annoying as it is much more eye straining to find the real error message in between the positioning text.

On Friday, 29 December 2017 at 07:53:51 UTC, IM wrote:
> I will start:
>
>    -- Better compiler errors, better compiler errors, better compiler errors.
>
>
> I really wish that the compiler errors could receive some refinement. Mostly it feels like some error text just being thrown at me. It needs to be better formatted, more helpful, with suggestions about how to fix (if possible).
>
> To illustrate my point:
>
> - See the compile errors I've just encountered with DMD: https://cdn.pbrd.co/images/H0q609l.png
>
> - Now compare that with an error produced by rustc:
> https://cdn.pbrd.co/images/H0q6bLi.png
>
>
> Simple things like these make a big difference. D Lang has been around for a long while now, and hence signs of its maturity has to show everywhere, especially in the compiler, as well as the package manager.

* R-value references.
* More "Hands free" package/dependency management (See Cargo(Rust))
* GC dependency free stdlib, with built-in general purpose async i/o library
* More sophisticated, official language server
* Better IDE support
* Full-fledged smart pointer (resembling std::unique_ptr<T>, std::shared_ptr<T>, std::weak_ptr<T> in the standard
* Riddance of `object`, and being able to hand-make rootobject. No common root class.

On Friday, 29 December 2017 at 23:27:38 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 12/29/2017 3:15 PM, Muld wrote:
>> Bugzilla is a huge mess tbh, creating a request in bugzilla won't lead anywhere.
>
> Fixes for bugzilla issues are posted on github nearly every day.

This does not mean anything, just cause fixes for Bugzilla issues are being fixed "nearly every day" is not part of the larger problem. The people that are pushing fixes for those issues tend to be the same people that are creating them. Sure I can create a bugzilla issue, but unless I'm the one that creates a fix for it, it probably won't be fixed unless it is a regression.

>> It's so bad honestly it'd probably be less work just to create a new bugzilla and port any relevant entries from the current one.
>
> It's not a big deal to create a duplicate of existing entries. As to bugzilla itself, despite its issues, it is far far far better and more organized than randomly looking in chat rooms, stack overflow, newsgroups, etc.

Living on Mars is far far better than trying to live on the surface of the Sun. Just cause that's the case doesn't mean you should stop looking for a place called Earth.

On Saturday, 30 December 2017 at 06:55:13 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> It's not like we have a shortage of bugzilla issues and are wondering what to do next.

Yah there are a ton of Bugzilla issues, that's the problem. More than half of them aren't "actionable" as you put it.

Here's the problem, look at something like Rust:

Pull requests? 95 open, it's about the same as Dlang, But if you go to the last page...

https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pulls?page=4&q=is%3Apr+is%3Aopen

Look at that the oldest one is from October 15th, 20_17_.

Now we go to DMD...

https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pulls?page=6&q=is%3Apr+is%3Aopen

Oldest one is from January 17, 20_13_.


In contrast this same problem exists for Bugzilla. You say it's working cause it's better than using notepad or some other stupid shit. Bugzilla isn't the issue, it's the fact the people maintaining it aren't willing to commit to anything and leave issues open that shouldn't be left open. That just results in noise making it difficult to see what actual issues are. I'm not even talking about duplicate entries as you seem to have have misunderstood.

On 30 December 2017 at 15:42, Muld via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, 30 December 2017 at 06:55:13 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> It's not like we have a shortage of bugzilla issues and are wondering what to do next.
>
>
> Yah there are a ton of Bugzilla issues, that's the problem. More than half of them aren't "actionable" as you put it.
>

There's nothing unmanageable about the issue tracker, nor are the number of open bugs even a reliable measure of anything.  For instance, Python has more than twice as many open bugs than D.


> Here's the problem, look at something like Rust:
>
> Pull requests? 95 open, it's about the same as Dlang, But if you go to the last page...
>
> https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pulls?page=4&q=is%3Apr+is%3Aopen
>
> Look at that the oldest one is from October 15th, 20_17_.
>
> Now we go to DMD...
>
> https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pulls?page=6&q=is%3Apr+is%3Aopen
>
> Oldest one is from January 17, 20_13_.
>

Hey, I take offence to that.

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17839

https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7503 https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7508 https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7509 https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7510 https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7527 https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7536

And many more closed that were even older, and I'm not the only one reviving these patches, all of which are either abandoned, incomplete, or too controversial (there is always a valid reason why open PRs were left to rot).

>
> In contrast this same problem exists for Bugzilla. You say it's working cause it's better than using notepad or some other stupid shit. Bugzilla isn't the issue, it's the fact the people maintaining it aren't willing to commit to anything and leave issues open that shouldn't be left open. That just results in noise making it difficult to see what actual issues are. I'm not even talking about duplicate entries as you seem to have have misunderstood.

All open issues are actionable, and require some action.  They are not noise, and many issues whose fix requires a change in language specification or semantics are understandably left to the few who have the authoritative to make such final decisions on whether it should be accepted or rejected.

Age of issue is not a big deal.  In fact I see it as a good sign that at least issues are left to breathe while we wait and understand the impact or urgency of it.  As opposed to jumping in and fixing issues immediately without taking due diligence on the wider picture it affects.