I'm sure this was brought up in the past, but DMD definitely needs stable and unstable branches.

-v1 doesn't cut it. My code is compiled with -v1 and still breaks with new DMD versions.

Each new DMD version is bug-ridden. This new one 1.011 is pretty bad!

How am I supposed to let others use my code when there's no stability in the compiler? They update their compiler and report to me "your code is broken"; well, no, DMD is broken.

I have a ton of code that doesn't work on any of the new DMD compilers; I have to use an old pre-1.0 compiler, because the recent compilers are bug-ridden. Some bugs get fixed, but even more get added.

I'm sure a lot of you out there have similar experiences. Speak up now, please!

With each new release I get more and more frustrated with D. There's no stability! I know you want more and more features, but how can I keep using a language like this?

-

I know, I know, report bugs. This doesn't cut it. Reporting bugs is hard as hell and time consuming. I need time to report bugs. Now I have to either restrict use to specific compiler versions, which people don't always know about and report their issues back to me, until I remind them they need to downgrade their compiler (which isn't always an option if they need bug fixes), or I have to rush to fix my code to workaround such issues and report bugs. If there was a stable branch, I could get the code working with the unstable branch at a reasonable pace.

-

D 1.0 means nothing. The 1.0 release was a huge flop. I think it could have done so much better and retained more users. We need some stability and to try the big release one more time. "D 1.1 release 'whoops, got it right this time'" (hopefully).

Also, the documentation should probably clearly state differences between versions, perhaps even with the words "unstable" near the things not in the stable branch. (Safe to ignore 1.0 since it's pointless.)

-

I've had all this in the back of my mind for quite some time and I've tried to be patient about it. I'm not trying threaten anyone, but I don't know how much longer I'm going to put up with D with its current methods. Note that I am probably one of the oldest D users still using it.

-

Thanks for your time.

- Christopher E. Miller
www.dprogramming.com
miller[] on #D freenode.

Yes, thats what i also thought.
Please do this little extra work,
it would be a really big quality enhancement.

I agree.
D really needs 2 branches:
* 1.x would be a bug fixes only version. (stable)
* 2.0 would be a new features and bug fixes version. (unstable, language expansion version)

After some time, for example, 1 year, it would merge the 2.0 branch into the stable branch and do it again. (2.x and 3.0 branches).
So users could keep using DMD until there's a new stable version, and they could port / fix the code to be compatible with the new stable release.

If DMD stays very unstable as it is it will be forever having broken libraries, which will slow down the development of possible frameworks and tools. Because of this one-version-only compatibility.
And this is a bad thing for the growing of the language and the community itself.

It's very sad to have a hard work with some project and then you find out that it doesn't work with the new compiler version, and you have to fix this very quickly because users want updated compilers to use with your library. With the stable branch we would keep using it and every library would work OK.
If someone decides to use the unstable DMD version this person would do it knowing that it may not be compatible with current libraries and source codes.

I hope the developers of D do something about this.
miller[] is really a very active user of D and is doing great work coding libraries.
If the current problem is making he write this, I think this is a serious problem that might be affecting other users as well.
Sorry, for my bad english. And I hope you understand what I'm saying.

Thanks.

Frederico Wagner
Lectus on #D freenode.

Chris Miller wrote:

> 
> I've had all this in the back of my mind for quite some time and I've tried to be patient about it. I'm not trying threaten anyone, but I don't know how much longer I'm going to put up with D with its current methods. Note that I am probably one of the oldest D users still using it.
> 

I agree with you.

Additionally I think there are some really good Open Source ways of working which are much more productive than current way of developing D. I mean e.g. SVN repository (encourages to prepare patches), some kind of tracking of enhancement requests (better than bugzilla), better way of packaging compiler with standard library (I really can not get clue why linux and windows versions of dmd are mixed in one packages; additionally breaking packages into DMD/DMC while have same merits is not very user friendly), more people with "write rights" for DMD/Phobos, eventually even help for Tango people (e.g. bundling it with DMD or support in DMD for other standard libraries not just Phobos).

I can live with current state, but I am sure that definitely using good standards from other successfull projects would help D much more than super hyper new features. (I am not against constness, as it look as very important feature, but macros... well...). There are also some rough edges in D which should be polished probably with higher priority than adding new features...

Just a few additional thoughts...

-- 
Regards
Marcin Kuszczak (Aarti_pl)
-------------------------------------
Ask me why I believe in Jesus - http://zapytaj.dlajezusa.pl (en/pl)
Doost (port of few Boost libraries) - http://www.dsource.org/projects/doost/
-------------------------------------

I second the notion, big time.

I'm seconding this; branches would be much appreciated for all the reasons other have posted.

"Chris Miller" <chris@dprogramming.com> wrote in message news:op.tqmzf7bzpo9bzi@tanu2003.tanu2003net.local...
> I'm sure this was brought up in the past, but DMD definitely needs stable and unstable branches.
>
> -v1 doesn't cut it. My code is compiled with -v1 and still breaks with new DMD versions.
>
> Each new DMD version is bug-ridden. This new one 1.011 is pretty bad!
>
> How am I supposed to let others use my code when there's no stability in the compiler? They update their compiler and report to me "your code is broken"; well, no, DMD is broken.
>
> I have a ton of code that doesn't work on any of the new DMD compilers; I have to use an old pre-1.0 compiler, because the recent compilers are bug-ridden. Some bugs get fixed, but even more get added.
>
> I'm sure a lot of you out there have similar experiences. Speak up now, please!
>
> With each new release I get more and more frustrated with D. There's no stability! I know you want more and more features, but how can I keep using a language like this?
>
> -
>
> I know, I know, report bugs. This doesn't cut it. Reporting bugs is hard as hell and time consuming. I need time to report bugs. Now I have to either restrict use to specific compiler versions, which people don't always know about and report their issues back to me, until I remind them they need to downgrade their compiler (which isn't always an option if they need bug fixes), or I have to rush to fix my code to workaround such issues and report bugs. If there was a stable branch, I could get the code working with the unstable branch at a reasonable pace.
>
> -
>
> D 1.0 means nothing. The 1.0 release was a huge flop. I think it could have done so much better and retained more users. We need some stability and to try the big release one more time. "D 1.1 release 'whoops, got it right this time'" (hopefully).
>
> Also, the documentation should probably clearly state differences between versions, perhaps even with the words "unstable" near the things not in the stable branch. (Safe to ignore 1.0 since it's pointless.)
>
> -
>
> I've had all this in the back of my mind for quite some time and I've tried to be patient about it. I'm not trying threaten anyone, but I don't know how much longer I'm going to put up with D with its current methods. Note that I am probably one of the oldest D users still using it.
>
I agree. If D ever wants to be practically deployable in the real world it has to be stable; coders need to have a relatively consistent compiler and language and say "here, this is d."
> -
>
> Thanks for your time.
>
> - Christopher E. Miller
> www.dprogramming.com
> miller[] on #D freenode.

I second branching if -v1 doesn't perfectly imitate the state of the 1.0 compiler.

I also second the motion for putting D development and sources on SVN - in spite of my feelings for SVN nomenclature.

If the powers-that-be agree, then I would suggest moving it to SVN, taking the 1.0 release as-is, and then carefully merge-diff'ing it up to current for bug fixes.

Chris Miller wrote:
> I'm sure this was brought up in the past, but DMD definitely needs stable and unstable branches.

Agreed.


> -v1 doesn't cut it. My code is compiled with -v1 and still breaks with new DMD versions.

Same here.


> Each new DMD version is bug-ridden. This new one 1.011 is pretty bad!

It's even worse than this in my case. With a few friends, I'm doing a project for the Team Programming course at my univ. It's a First Person Shooter, containing more than 55k lines of our own D code plus some 200k of dependencies, such as DDL, Mango, Code Analyzer, Derelict, Enki, MinTL and various bindings. And we're stuck with... DMD 0.175. I've tried every single DMD release which came after 0.175, including 1.010b, and each has its own problems. The old bugs get slowly fixed, but new ones appear at a frightening pace. DMD 1.011 adds some more mixin issues to the pile, and even with -v1, considers 'ref' a keyword.


The worst problems with the new DMDs are codegen issues. For instance, http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1068

Earlier, 1.007 had a weird NRVO problem. It could return garbage from functions when their calls appeared at the return statement. It seems to be gone, but no one filled a bug report and I'm not sure if it's not just lurking someplace else.

My team and me have first got stuck with DMD 0.175 when 0.176 changed the ABI and DDL stopped working for us. But then I updated DDL to the ABI of DMD 1.0. I can't even test it because bugs have appeared over the time. Some made Mango not compile, thus sending DDL to bite the dust as well. The latest and best one is the invalid codegen issue from the link above. I can't even make our game's GUI run because I'm getting random access violations.
After updating to DMD 1.011, I had some errors telling me about it not being able to find identifiers that certainly were there. Yet Another Mixin Bug.

D really needs to get stable before anything serious can be made in it... Not that I don't like the new features. The CTFE, mixins and smarter IFTI are just great... If only I could use them. Our project contains numerous workarounds for the issues in DMD 0.175 because we can't just report a bug and hope we'll be able to continue with the next DMD release. We're stuck with 0.175 and we've been stuck with it for the last 5 months.

I'm a huge fan of D and a long-time user, but I simply don't know what to tell people when they ask why we're using some archaic 0.175 version and not the new one with all the spiffy features. Please, fix D.


--
Tomasz Stachowiak
http://h3.team0xf.com/
h3/h3r3tic on #D freenode

Chris Miller wrote:
> I'm sure this was brought up in the past, but DMD definitely needs stable and unstable branches.
> 
> -v1 doesn't cut it. My code is compiled with -v1 and still breaks with new DMD versions.
> 
> Each new DMD version is bug-ridden. This new one 1.011 is pretty bad!
> 

What are, say, the three major bugs that are preventing you from compiling code?

Don't get me wrong - I can understand your frustration (and thanks for DFL, Entice, et al), and I'm not discounting your problems, but I guess I haven't seen or heard that the newer compilers were more 'buggy' than the old. I thought quite a few things had actually improved since the pre-1.0 days. DStress (http://dstress.kuehne.cn/www/dstress.html) seems to show steady improvement anyhow.

IMHO, since Walter is only one person, what you're asking for (branches) may actually have the unintended consequence of slowing down the fixes. For many of the bugs, it would probably require making mods. to two diverging code bases.

Thanks,

- Dave