May 10, 2009
Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> Brad Roberts, el 10 de mayo a las 10:12 me escribiste:
>> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>>
>>> How many people is using that? How bad would it be to call the next version of DMD that include the Tango/Druntime runtime D 1.100 or something (is really hard to pick right version numbers under the version scheme you use[*]) to make clear there is compatibility break in that version?
>>>
>>> [*] I really wonder how would you call D2 when it's stable. You will just
>>>     say D 2.134 is D2 final/stable? I think this is another problem with
>>>     D, version naming is really confusing and lame. You can't know
>>>     anything from a D version number. And DMD compiler and D specs are too
>>>     much coupled. It would be nice to have separate version numbers if you
>>>     really want to encourage some kind of D standard and compiler vendors
>>>     to start making D compilers.
>> For what it's worth, there's at least one other major product that follows a similar versioning scheme.. mysql.
> 
> At least MySQL uses major, minor, and patchlevel version numbering scheme ;)
> 

Mysql uses an x.y.z numbering scheme.  DMD uses a y.z numbering scheme.  With mysql's x.y being equavilent to dmd's y.  The use of z in both is the same. Given that mysql's increase of its x.y component being somewhat arbitrary, it might as well just be one number.

Either way, the transition of the z component through various stages from alpha to release being at arbitrary points along the number line, my point still stands. :)

Later,
Brad
May 11, 2009
Brad Roberts, el 10 de mayo a las 16:08 me escribiste:
> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> 
> > I reported the bug because I think that could be the case. If is not, it's a Gold bug and it should be reported. If it is, it should be fixed in DMD. I don't have the knowlegde to check that myself, and that's why I reported the bug to both tools.
> > 
> >> In other words, it's not at all surprising to me that the bug report hasn't received a lot of attention yet.
> > 
> > So you are saying you have to be a compiler hacker to report a bug? Great, that make sense!
> 
> You seem to have missed my point.  The point was, the more detailed the report, the clearer the steps to reproduce, the more obvious it is that the compiler is what's broken.. all of these things increase the likelihood of a bug report having a higher priority.
> 
> The incoming rate is higher than the fix rate (as evidenced by the number of open bugs) and so something has to give.  All I was doing was illustrating some reasons that might have contributed to that specific report not having been fixed yet.
> 
> Do I encourage filing bugs without the level of detail I suggest help get bugs fixed fast?  Absolutely.  An un-filed bug is an un-fixed bug.
> 
> Take these points as ways to help make sure your important issues can be addressed quickly and easily.

I totally agree, but you put my bug report as an example of a bad bug report. I don't think it is a bad bug report, so please let me know if you think I can improve it without being a compiler hacker.

-- 
Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145  104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
He used to do surgery
On girls in the eighties
But gravity always wins
May 11, 2009
Walter Bright, el 10 de mayo a las 15:42 me escribiste:
> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> >Walter Bright, el 10 de mayo a las 11:21 me escribiste:
> >I posted it in this very same thread, just before the link to the GDB
> >patches link. Here it is again:
> >http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Getting_D_language_patch_into_GDB_82597.html
> 
> Thank you.

You are welcome. I'm very glad this is taking some attention =)

In case you missed my other mail, I opened a bug report in GDB bugzilla to keep track of the patch: http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=10142

> >>Given all the beating of breasts and rending of robes about D1 not being stable and breaking code even when a bug is fixed in it, I just can't see coming out with a new D1 that substantially breaks every existing D1 code base.
> >It would break all existing D1 code base?
> 
> I suspect it would break pretty much all the non-trivial code.

What are exactly the user-visible changes?

> >If the compiler were really open source, and the frontend were in a public repository, and fixes would be well separated patches, you wouldn't have to maintain 3 D version.
> 
> It's not just me, it's the poor sap who has to maintain 3 different versions of his library.

This is not fixable by adding a aliases for old names and leave them as deprecated?

> >>D2 has already taken the steps necessary to support both Phobos and Tango.
> >But D2 is not nearly ready for production use. D1 is almost there... Is missing so little that it's frustrating.
> 
> I don't believe that contract inheritance is the key to production use. There shouldn't be anything standing in the way of using D1 for production use, and in fact it is being used that way.

Honestly I'm not confident enough in D1 for production use if it's
incomplete and if the Tango/Druntime runtime is not merged because
2 codebases should be maintained and you can't use the few libraries
available for one runtime with the other (without using some hackish
wrappers). Lack of support in mainstream tools is the other thing
preventing me to use D at work. I *can't* use D for something serious
(sadly, because I'd love to).

> >In case you are not following the thread about interior pointers, here is another drawback for the Tango vs. Phobos problem, here is copy&pasted fragment:
> >  I think it would be great to have a centralized place where to put this
> >  improvements. This is another situation where I think Tango vs. Phobos
> >  issue is killing D. When I started my work in the thesis I had to decide
> >  whether to work with Phobos or Tango. I finally decided for Tango, because
> >  is the only option for LDC and because is way better organized (and more
> >  receptive to patches). But I hate knowing that my work will be available
> >  (in the best case) only for people using Tango.
> 
> I don't believe that splitting D into yet another separate version can fix this, as then the user has to decide which D to use.

Use the latest stable version, as you do with any serious language =) You shouldn't introduce breaking changes too often. I think a language version bump every (half) year is very acceptable.

I mean, just see how Python/Ruby/PHP/Java/Haskel/<pick any other language> development model works, all very evolving languages that don't break backwards compatibility very often and with a lot of well maintained programs and libraries.

But this is getting repetitive, so I guess it has no point to keep discussing it. Once in a while I have the crazy idea that you can be convinced otherwise (hey! You finally got convinced to fork D2 from D1! =)...

Maybe I'll try again in a few months...

-- 
Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145  104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Si ella es el sol, yo soy la luna
Si ella es el mar, soy el desierto
Y estamos en eclipse total
Y estamos en eclipse total
May 11, 2009
Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> In case you missed my other mail, I opened a bug report in GDB bugzilla to
> keep track of the patch:
> http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=10142

This is great. I'm glad you're pushing this.
May 11, 2009
Walter Bright, el 10 de mayo a las 20:54 me escribiste:
> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> >Walter Bright, el 10 de mayo a las 15:44 me escribiste:
> > 
> >>Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> >> 
> >>>>>There was a thread
> >>>>>in the NG asking for possible copyright issues to include the GDB patch
> >>>>>upstream, and it had no answer for example. I don't think you *have* to
> >>>>>answer that mail, but I think helping this kind of things happening
> >>>>>instead of ignoring them is good for D promotion too =)
> >>>>> 
> >>>>Can you point me to that thread? There are an awful lot of posts, and I miss things.
> >>>> 
> >>>I posted it in this very same thread, just before the link to the GDB
> >>>patches link. Here it is again:
> >>>http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Getting_D_language_patch_into_GDB_82597.html
> >>> 
> >>If someone has a patch ready to submit to GDB, and needs some licensing change for it, I'm happy to provide that.
> >> 
> >
> >I've opened a new "bug" in GDB bugzilla to keep track of D support patch. It would be great if people that has anything to do with the patch (the patch author and Walter, I guess, if the demangle code is from DMD) can follow the bug report.
> > 
> 
> URL, please!

http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=10142

> (Also, did you mean to post this in the n.g.?)

Yes, sorry!

-- 
Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145  104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHINO ATRAPA COTORRAS
	-- Crónica TV
May 11, 2009
Walter Bright, el 10 de mayo a las 21:03 me escribiste:
> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> >In case you missed my other mail, I opened a bug report in GDB bugzilla to keep track of the patch: http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=10142
> 
> This is great. I'm glad you're pushing this.

I just hope one day in a near future we have D support in the tools I use daily to develop as good as C++ so I can have a chance to convince my boss to be able to use it at work =)

-- 
Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145  104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Are you such a dreamer?
To put the world to rights?
I'll stay home forever
Where two & two always
makes up five
May 11, 2009
Tomas Lindquist Olsen, el  9 de mayo a las 15:55 me escribiste:
> The main feeling I've come to settle on during the soon two years I've spent with LDC, is: we need a new frontend! D1 and D2 both have these problems, and they're not going away by themselves.

Are you saying Dlang is comming? 8-)~

-- 
Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145  104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
cederrón.
	(De CD-ROM, y este sigla del ingl. Compact Disc Read-Only Memory).
	1. m. Inform. CD-ROM.
	-- Real Academia Española
May 11, 2009
Steve Teale wrote:
> Georg Wrede Wrote:
> 
>> Things we have (like every binary release [and I assume, an implicit promise of keeping it that way] downloadable forever), the source code to /both/ the front end and the back end distributed every time -- for both reading example usage, learning by looking at unittests, and for a deep understanding of both the compiler and the library code in detail, ... it's stuff like this we don't advertise enough. (( Of course, not to mention actual language highlights that are really smashing! But they're outside of this post.))
>>
>> And the parts of D that are unique, we don't see them splashed all over the net either. It can and should be possible without the PR budget of Oracle, too.
>>
>> Anybody over 40 knows that Pascal was an excellent language for programmming classes. (Yes, it was even created for that purpose, originally.) But then, nobody at all knows that out of all "known" languages, D is (by FAR!!) the one a university /should/ choose as the introductory language. Hah, and even fewer can imagine that D is the language they should use in advanced classes! And, thus, virtually nobody knows that being blessed with having originally learned a language that has the strength to carry you all the way from intro to PhD, makes you seriously privileged. And with a robust and solid mother tongue like this, forages into C++, Java, Ruby, Haskell, Scheme, ASM, and the like, will seem like a breeze, and don't destroy or *undo* /the very foundations of/ your world as a programmer.
> 
> Yes! I may continue to bitch, but you are so right. D is extraordinarily cool! Poa sana as I could say in the domain of my current residency.
> 
> Somehow we have to advance the announcements and learn newsgroups so that they are primary, and change perceptions such that the "suggestions for the next version of D" newsgroup - currently the main newsgroup - is a specialist affair that most readers think they can safely ignore.

I agree. When someone clicks the "D Forum" link on the front page, they should get to the D.learn newsgroup. Also, said link should be more prominent, not tucked away at the bottom of the menu.

-Lars
May 11, 2009
Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> I just hope one day in a near future we have D support in the tools I use
> daily to develop as good as C++ so I can have a chance to convince my boss
> to be able to use it at work =)

Hoping is one thing, but submitting patches, bug reports, etc. to the tool developers is much more effective!
May 11, 2009
"Leandro Lucarella" <llucax@gmail.com> wrote in message news:20090509161148.GA23213@homero.springfield.home...
> The Tango vs. Phobos is still a *BIG* issue for D1. I think don't addressing that is a huge error. It's only hurting D1 and preventing its adoption.
>
Yes. This is the showstopper for me and what caused me to quietly walk away from D to begin with. In my opinion the fact that having two runtimes is not only tolerable but acceptable as normal has and will continue to hurt D1. We have Phobos, the "official" runtime and then we have Tango, the "community" runtime. Moreover having two runtimes casts doubt on the state of D as a whole; if we can't even decide on a uniform runtime then people will wonder what other unknown traps of incompleteness are in store. The fact that nobody bothered to work all this out makes perfect sense- it's a lot more fun to be hashing out new features- but if we intend to gain some semblance of mainstream respect then it will be much easier with a single robust runtime.

Ameer