Hello all,


There's quite a few changes that we're very excited about, that I'd love to share to the extent possible.

First, we have decided to extend commit rights to Daniel Murphy and Martin Nowak, two heavyweight dmd contributors better known under their noms de plume: yebblies and dawgfoto, respectively. Please join me in congratulating them for this token of appreciation for their talent and hard work.

We want to move dmd forward faster, and we're encouraging committers to be more aggressive about reviewing and merging patches. Language changes will still have to get through Scylla and Charybdis (that's Walter and yours truly), but bug fixes and other non-controversial work can be safely parallelized.

Here's a small draft to guide contributors to the compiler proper: http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?Contributing_To_The_D_Compiler. It's mostly authored by Don, and we should all add to it sections and topics that we consider relevant. At a later point we'll link to the document from the website, or integrate it there.

We also want to formalize and automate our processes, including building the compiler and its libraries, testing it all, contributing, website, and so on. We believe that's a prerequisite to handle (and indeed condition) the projected growth of the language. To that end, we'll try to define and use a build and release procedure. There's been talk about a git workflow; if anyone wants to volunteer creating a detailed document describing the steps done, that would be awesome.

Last but not least, we're in talks with a professional conference organizer about setting up a D conference. We're looking at some quite interesting approaches, but one invariant is that community participation and drive is key. We'll get back to you as details firm up; for now, lightly hash the months of April and May with a pencil.


Thanks,

Andrei

P.S. Speaking only for myself: there's been robust community growth and increase in participation in the past twelve months. It's also clear to me that although the resources we have now are fine for today's user base, we need to scale well in advance to what we project. By my estimates the community size is in the five digits now. To go 1-2 orders of magnitude higher, I estimate that continuing to do what we do today is far from enough, so we'll need to do some radical changes. Some may be risky, and some may be painful. But the as the guy in "Die Hard 2" said: no guts, no glory. Let's do this together.

On Tuesday, 25 September 2012 at 22:09:37 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello all,
>
>
> There's quite a few changes that we're very excited about, that I'd love to share to the extent possible.
>
> First, we have decided to extend commit rights to Daniel Murphy and Martin Nowak, two heavyweight dmd contributors better known under their noms de plume: yebblies and dawgfoto, respectively. Please join me in congratulating them for this token of appreciation for their talent and hard work.
>
> We want to move dmd forward faster, and we're encouraging committers to be more aggressive about reviewing and merging patches. Language changes will still have to get through Scylla and Charybdis (that's Walter and yours truly), but bug fixes and other non-controversial work can be safely parallelized.
>
> Here's a small draft to guide contributors to the compiler proper: http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?Contributing_To_The_D_Compiler. It's mostly authored by Don, and we should all add to it sections and topics that we consider relevant. At a later point we'll link to the document from the website, or integrate it there.
>

Speaking of the 'front-end proper':
"Given that all back-ends share the same front-end, you should expect the same compatibility level across all compilers for a given compiler release."

Unfortunately, this is not quite the case yet. I'm in the middle of drafting something, but the ultimate goal is to get us all working together (dmd, gdc, ldc) so that there can genuinely be a shared, portable source base for the D front-end, used by all maintainers, without the neccesity to modify the original code, or use conditionals based on which compiler it's used in. eg: #ifdef IN_GCC, IN_LDC, IN_DMD...


Keep up the good work! :~)

Regards,
Iain.

Seems like as good a time as any to say how awesome I think D is, and how much the world needs it! Where I work, we have a monstrosity of a project using all of Java, C++ and Lua, with all three interoperating in all directions. We've been asked to write all new code in C++ for reasons of portability. Having used Java extensively and D a little, I. Cannot. Stand. The. Pain. Of. Need for header files, lack of automatic memory initialisation, lack of decent IDE support because the language is just that bad... So while they're right about Java not being portable, I'm holding out and continuing to write in Java anyway. :)

So I absolutely want D to grow and get the support it needs to be able to replace C++, and the sooner the better! Go D! :)

(Normally I'd worry how many people I just offended, but probably not here :D)

On 25/09/2012 23:10, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello all,
>
>
> There's quite a few changes that we're very excited about, that I'd love
> to share to the extent possible.
>
> First, we have decided to extend commit rights to Daniel Murphy and
> Martin Nowak, two heavyweight dmd contributors better known under their
> noms de plume: yebblies and dawgfoto, respectively. Please join me in
> congratulating them for this token of appreciation for their talent and
> hard work.
>
> We want to move dmd forward faster, and we're encouraging committers to
> be more aggressive about reviewing and merging patches. Language changes
> will still have to get through Scylla and Charybdis (that's Walter and
> yours truly), but bug fixes and other non-controversial work can be
> safely parallelized.
>
> Here's a small draft to guide contributors to the compiler proper:
> http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?Contributing_To_The_D_Compiler.
> It's mostly authored by Don, and we should all add to it sections and
> topics that we consider relevant. At a later point we'll link to the
> document from the website, or integrate it there.
>
> We also want to formalize and automate our processes, including building
> the compiler and its libraries, testing it all, contributing, website,
> and so on. We believe that's a prerequisite to handle (and indeed
> condition) the projected growth of the language. To that end, we'll try
> to define and use a build and release procedure. There's been talk about
> a git workflow; if anyone wants to volunteer creating a detailed
> document describing the steps done, that would be awesome.
>
> Last but not least, we're in talks with a professional conference
> organizer about setting up a D conference. We're looking at some quite
> interesting approaches, but one invariant is that community
> participation and drive is key. We'll get back to you as details firm
> up; for now, lightly hash the months of April and May with a pencil.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrei
>
> P.S. Speaking only for myself: there's been robust community growth and
> increase in participation in the past twelve months. It's also clear to
> me that although the resources we have now are fine for today's user
> base, we need to scale well in advance to what we project. By my
> estimates the community size is in the five digits now. To go 1-2 orders
> of magnitude higher, I estimate that continuing to do what we do today
> is far from enough, so we'll need to do some radical changes. Some may
> be risky, and some may be painful. But the as the guy in "Die Hard 2"
> said: no guts, no glory. Let's do this together.

Andrei Alexandrescu:

> I estimate that continuing to do what we do today is far from enough, so we'll need to do some radical changes. Some may be risky, and some may be painful. But the as the guy in "Die Hard 2" said: no guts, no glory. Let's do this together.

Currently the D community is still small, so I suggest to add this link to the D home page:
http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:D

Bye,
bearophile

On 9/25/12 6:31 PM, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> Speaking of the 'front-end proper':
> "Given that all back-ends share the same front-end, you should expect
> the same compatibility level across all compilers for a given compiler
> release."
>
> Unfortunately, this is not quite the case yet. I'm in the middle of
> drafting something, but the ultimate goal is to get us all working
> together (dmd, gdc, ldc) so that there can genuinely be a shared,
> portable source base for the D front-end, used by all maintainers,
> without the neccesity to modify the original code, or use conditionals
> based on which compiler it's used in. eg: #ifdef IN_GCC, IN_LDC, IN_DMD...

That's great, keep us posted.

> Keep up the good work! :~)

Well right back atcha.


Andrei

On 2012-09-26 00:10, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello all,
>
>
> There's quite a few changes that we're very excited about, that I'd love
> to share to the extent possible.
>
> First, we have decided to extend commit rights to Daniel Murphy and
> Martin Nowak, two heavyweight dmd contributors better known under their
> noms de plume: yebblies and dawgfoto, respectively. Please join me in
> congratulating them for this token of appreciation for their talent and
> hard work.

That's awesome.

> We want to move dmd forward faster, and we're encouraging committers to
> be more aggressive about reviewing and merging patches. Language changes
> will still have to get through Scylla and Charybdis (that's Walter and
> yours truly), but bug fixes and other non-controversial work can be
> safely parallelized.

Sounds good.

> Here's a small draft to guide contributors to the compiler proper:
> http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?Contributing_To_The_D_Compiler.
> It's mostly authored by Don, and we should all add to it sections and
> topics that we consider relevant. At a later point we'll link to the
> document from the website, or integrate it there.

This should really be moved to a "Contribute" section on dlang.org. I've been thinking about writing that section a couple of times but I have not done so yet.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Wednesday, 26 September 2012 at 06:28:00 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2012-09-26 00:10, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

> By my estimates the community size is in the five digits now.

So how do you estimate these numbers ?

Nick B

On 9/26/12 5:37 AM, Nick B wrote:
> On Wednesday, 26 September 2012 at 06:28:00 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> On 2012-09-26 00:10, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>
>> By my estimates the community size is in the five digits now.
>
> So how do you estimate these numbers ?
>
> Nick B

Downloads, website visits, newsgroup visits. I want us to get a lot more transparent about that all, soon.

Andrei

On Tuesday, 25 September 2012 at 22:09:37 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> [SNIP]
>
> We want to move dmd forward faster, and we're encouraging committers to be more aggressive about reviewing and merging patches. Language changes will still have to get through Scylla and Charybdis (that's Walter and yours truly), but bug fixes and other non-controversial work can be safely parallelized.
>
> [SNIP]
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrei
>
> [SNIP]

Any chance we could see some sort of "dedicated hand holders" for the newer contributors? That or "semi-trusted" validators: They wouldn't have the power to merge themselves, but could still tag pulls as "Validated by XXX": Basically, a screening process.

I know that personally, I feel like I can help, but at the same time, I know I sometimes try to push some bad code/design. I'm glad there is someone that actually takes the time to review my code, but at the same time, I don't want to bother the dedicated pullers that already have a lot on their plate.

Also (but more related to Phobos), I have myself tried to review others' code (when my field of knowledge permits), but it seems like it is not something that is done very often.

Overall, I think the most important thing would be promoting cross puller reviews. If only just to say "looks good to me!": It can give the puller that extra confidence in the pull, without having to delve into it.

I don't mind having to wait 3 weeks for a pull to go through, but it is kind of weird when the pull just sits there with no comments *from anyone* during those 3 weeks...

On 26-Sep-12 02:10, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> First, we have decided to extend commit rights to Daniel Murphy and
> Martin Nowak, two heavyweight dmd contributors better known under their
> noms de plume: yebblies and dawgfoto, respectively. Please join me in
> congratulating them for this token of appreciation for their talent and
> hard work.

Congrats!

>
> We want to move dmd forward faster, and we're encouraging committers to
> be more aggressive about reviewing and merging patches. Language changes
> will still have to get through Scylla and Charybdis (that's Walter and
> yours truly), but bug fixes and other non-controversial work can be
> safely parallelized.

*Me appreciatively nods*


> We also want to formalize and automate our processes, including building
> the compiler and its libraries, testing it all, contributing, website,
> and so on. We believe that's a prerequisite to handle (and indeed
> condition) the projected growth of the language. To that end, we'll try
> to define and use a build and release procedure. There's been talk about
> a git workflow; if anyone wants to volunteer creating a detailed
> document describing the steps done, that would be awesome.

Risking a shameless plug, a prototype of the D changelog generator written in D:
https://gist.github.com/3734045
(pulls resolved issues from bugzilla so that nothing is left behind)

I've posted it before but it seems to have been lost in Phobos mailing list. The Q is: if we need such a tool and more generally what kind of tools/scripts could help the release process to go smoother.

Ideally I think it should get close to the point of "a single hit of a button" to run all relevant tasks, checks and uploads.

In other words - core developers what's on your wishlist?

> Last but not least, we're in talks with a professional conference
> organizer about setting up a D conference. We're looking at some quite
> interesting approaches, but one invariant is that community
> participation and drive is key. We'll get back to you as details firm
> up; for now, lightly hash the months of April and May with a pencil.

Cool.


-- 
Dmitry Olshansky