https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/3631

Apparently it was decided at DConf 2015 to remove std.stream and friends from Phobos. But these modules have been left untouched (i.e. they're "stable") for a long time, and there's a lot of D code using them. This decision seems to go in an opposite direction to other recent decisions (i.e. that we stop breaking code). Is everyone (incl. Walter AND Andrei) on board with this?

On Friday, 11 September 2015 at 20:29:56 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> Apparently it was decided at DConf 2015 to remove std.stream and friends from Phobos.

Kill it with fire.

On Friday, 11 September 2015 at 20:29:56 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/3631
>
> Apparently it was decided at DConf 2015 to remove std.stream and friends from Phobos. But these modules have been left untouched (i.e. they're "stable") for a long time, and there's a lot of D code using them. This decision seems to go in an opposite direction to other recent decisions (i.e. that we stop breaking code). Is everyone (incl. Walter AND Andrei) on board with this?

maybe if it was moved to DUB, it wouldn't be that disruptive?

On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 09:16:05PM +0000, Brian Schott via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Friday, 11 September 2015 at 20:29:56 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> >Apparently it was decided at DConf 2015 to remove std.stream and friends from Phobos.
> 
> Kill it with fire.

+1.


T

-- 
Guns don't kill people. Bullets do.

On 09/11/2015 11:47 PM, Daniel N wrote:
> maybe if it was moved to DUB, it wouldn't be that disruptive?

Yes, please add it to http://code.dlang.org/packages/undead at least.

On Friday, 11 September 2015 at 20:29:56 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/3631
>
> Apparently it was decided at DConf 2015 to remove std.stream and friends from Phobos. But these modules have been left untouched (i.e. they're "stable") for a long time, and there's a lot of D code using them. This decision seems to go in an opposite direction to other recent decisions (i.e. that we stop breaking code). Is everyone (incl. Walter AND Andrei) on board with this?

Walter and Andrei publicly agreed at dconf that it should be removed. As I understand it, it was removed from the documentation with 2.068 (but not yet deprecated), and now it's been deprecated. Now, that being said, I think 2.070 is too soon to remove it, because at the rate of releases that Martin is targeting, that's maybe 6 months as deprecated, which makes it far too easy IMHO for code to go from working to not compiling without any warnings in between for someone who's not updating their compiler frequently. Normally, the deprecation cycle has been approximately one year as deprecated but documented and approximately one year as deprecated but undocumented (and then the symbol would be removed), so code would continue to work as-is for about 2 years once something has been deprecated, which is about 4x longer than what std.stream is currently marked for. Now, granted, std.stream has essentially been marked as scheduled for deprecation for some time now (embarassingly long really), so in theory, it's not heavily used, but it's also pretty clear based on newsgroup posts and SO and whatnot that it _is_ being used on some level in spite of the fact that it's documentation says that it's going away.

So, I intend to open a PR to fix the targeted removal time (probably this evening) so that it's not quite so quick, but it'll still be a year at most, I think, given that it's been marked as scheduled for deprecation for so long and is no longer in the docs.

After that, as Martin points out, it should go in undead where folks can continue to use it if they really want to. But I don't think that code should simply stop compiling within a sixth month period. I'm all for deprecating and removing stuff that we want to get rid of and really don't like keeping it around long term, but we need a deprecation cycle that gives folks time to fix their code, and sadly, a note in the documentation really doesn't seem to be enough of a warning.

- Jonathan M Davis

On 09/11/2015 07:06 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Friday, 11 September 2015 at 20:29:56 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/3631
>>
>> Apparently it was decided at DConf 2015 to remove std.stream and
>> friends from Phobos. But these modules have been left untouched (i.e.
>> they're "stable") for a long time, and there's a lot of D code using
>> them. This decision seems to go in an opposite direction to other
>> recent decisions (i.e. that we stop breaking code). Is everyone (incl.
>> Walter AND Andrei) on board with this?
>
> Walter and Andrei publicly agreed at dconf that it should be removed.

That's right. I remember I said something like "it deserves a burial". It was on the spur of the moment; after that I figured I should have better said "Does it prevent anyone from writing good code? It's not in the documentation, so no new code will use it. Leave it be for now, no reason to do anything for a while".

> After that, as Martin points out, it should go in undead where folks can
> continue to use it if they really want to. But I don't think that code
> should simply stop compiling within a sixth month period. I'm all for
> deprecating and removing stuff that we want to get rid of and really
> don't like keeping it around long term, but we need a deprecation cycle
> that gives folks time to fix their code, and sadly, a note in the
> documentation really doesn't seem to be enough of a warning.

Undead is a great idea at least because it's a good place to park documentation for legacy code. In fact we should move undead to the dlang repo (now it's in digitalmars).

Let's let std.stream lay low for a while more, it's really not preventing anything from happening.


Andrei

On Friday, 11 September 2015 at 23:32:01 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Undead is a great idea at least because it's a good place to park documentation for legacy code. In fact we should move undead to the dlang repo (now it's in digitalmars).

Makes sense.

> Let's let std.stream lay low for a while more, it's really not preventing anything from happening.

Given that it's not in the docs, I do think that it should be deprecated (like it is now), but I definitely think that it should stick around longer than just 2.070. I don't like the idea of leaving deprecated code around long term, but we definitely want to give folks time to transition their code and reduce the risk of them missing the deprecation messages entirely because they waited half a year to update their compiler.

Though, now that I think about it, we should probably also put it in undead now (assuming that undead doesn't use std, which I assume it doesn't) - but still leave it in Phobos for the moment as well. Then folks that want to keep using it can just switch to the undead repo and not see the deprecation messages anymore if they don't intend to actually change their code so that it doesn't use std.stream, and those that haven't updated their code or switched to using undead would still see the deprecation messages.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Friday, 11 September 2015 at 23:06:16 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> So, I intend to open a PR to fix the targeted removal time (probably this evening) so that it's not quite so quick

Here's the PR: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/3647

- Jonathan M Davis

On Saturday, 12 September 2015 at 04:50:06 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Friday, 11 September 2015 at 23:06:16 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> So, I intend to open a PR to fix the targeted removal time (probably this evening) so that it's not quite so quick
>
> Here's the PR: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/3647

And it's now been merged by Walter. So, std.stream and friends will be around as deprecated but undocumented until about October of next year. And they're now in undeaD as well, so anyone who wants to continue to use them can just pull in undeaD instead and adjust their imports. So, std.stream is finally on the way out as planned but not quite so abruptly.

- Jonathan M Davis