While this is a long post describing a relatively detailed idea, it is my strong feelings that D has a really great community.  I think that a standard library should really be a community-wide undertaking.  A central committee is needed to oversee the process (as you'll see below) but I think that the community as a whole could do a lot to make a relatively comprehensive standard library a reality in a relatively short period of time.

This may have already been mentioned (I didn't feel like sifting through 384 new posts since I last had internet access in order to try to read all of the ones pertainant to this topic), but...

I think that a nice idea might be to form a small "committee" of say 2-4 people, tops, who come up with a library interface standard: a specific set of codified rules for anything to become a part of the standard library.  Have everything from package/module nomenclature to the notation of classes, methods and members (CONSTANT, ThisIsAMethod, thisIsAMember, STDThisIsAClass, thisisalocal, etc...).

Once the library standard has been codified, then it should be posted to the NG for comments and criticism.  After a period of, say, one week of discussion, a final set of rules would be drawn up.

Once the rules are in place, the "committee" should post a list of all of the various library features and "contract" out those tasks to people such that the list could look something like:

Feature             - Author         - Date Started - Last Update -  %
...
Regular Expressions - Deja Augustine - 08/26/2004   - 08/26/2004  -  0%
File Streams        - ...            - ...          - ...         - ...
...


So that anyone can easily see the current state of the standard library.

Furthermore, if you let anyone help but permit them to only "contract" one item, it will prevent people from doing redundant work, but will let people more easily get in touch with the contracted coder to help out. Also, if a while goes by without any progress, that can easily be seen by the last update.

People could also volunteer to pre-check library code at any updates to see if it follows the standards with final verification being done by the "committee" once it reaches 100% completion.

-Deja

Hi All,
from what I've read over the last few days, there seems to be a bit of
confusion about a whole range of things. I've tried to distil the ideas and
I've come up with this ...

*** There are at least four categories of publicly available libraries:
(a) The "official" standard library that is packaged and shipped with DMD.
Currently the name of this library is "Phobos"
(b) An "unofficial" standard library that could be used to replace the
"official" standard one. We don't have any of these yet, as far as I know.
(c) A library (module) that could potentially be added to the standard
library. Currently a lot of these are a part of the "Deimos" project, but
there may be others that are drifting about.
(d) A library module/library that is not intended to be added to the
standard library.

*** The current evolutionary stage of DMD is that Phobos needs to be reviewed and probably a lot of it rewritten.

*** Walter would rather that the work of producing the next generation of official standard library was done by others, however as it would be distributed with his DMD, Walter would need some right to control it's content.

*** A new project, possibly called "Phoenix", is about to be undertaken to review Phobos and build the next generation of the DMD standard library.

*** There is a concern that committees may act unreasonably at times.

*** There is a concern that contributors may act unreasonably at times.

If Phoenix gets going, it will need a written set of guidelines and visions so that contributors will know where they stand and what would be expected of their work. There will need to be a "disputes" process so that everyone involved can seek justice and resolution.

I suspect that peer review will be the most effective way to control the quality and direction of contributions.

And these are only the start of many real issues that would have to be dealt with in such a large project.

-- 
Derek
Melbourne, Australia
27/Aug/04 12:13:34 PM

Deja, thank you for your input.  If you don't mind, I'm going to cross-post your suggestions to the current open call for suggestions on DSource

http://www.dsource.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=316

Thanks!

- Pragma

In article <cgm67t$11vk$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Deja Augustine says...
>
>While this is a long post describing a relatively detailed idea, it is my strong feelings that D has a really great community.  I think that a standard library should really be a community-wide undertaking.  A central committee is needed to oversee the process (as you'll see below) but I think that the community as a whole could do a lot to make a relatively comprehensive standard library a reality in a relatively short period of time.
>
>This may have already been mentioned (I didn't feel like sifting through 384 new posts since I last had internet access in order to try to read all of the ones pertainant to this topic), but...
>
>I think that a nice idea might be to form a small "committee" of say 2-4 people, tops, who come up with a library interface standard: a specific set of codified rules for anything to become a part of the standard library.  Have everything from package/module nomenclature to the notation of classes, methods and members (CONSTANT, ThisIsAMethod, thisIsAMember, STDThisIsAClass, thisisalocal, etc...).
>
>Once the library standard has been codified, then it should be posted to the NG for comments and criticism.  After a period of, say, one week of discussion, a final set of rules would be drawn up.
>
>Once the rules are in place, the "committee" should post a list of all of the various library features and "contract" out those tasks to people such that the list could look something like:
>
>Feature             - Author         - Date Started - Last Update -  %
>...
>Regular Expressions - Deja Augustine - 08/26/2004   - 08/26/2004  -  0%
>File Streams        - ...            - ...          - ...         - ...
>...
>
>
>So that anyone can easily see the current state of the standard library.
>
>Furthermore, if you let anyone help but permit them to only "contract" one item, it will prevent people from doing redundant work, but will let people more easily get in touch with the contracted coder to help out. Also, if a while goes by without any progress, that can easily be seen by the last update.
>
>People could also volunteer to pre-check library code at any updates to see if it follows the standards with final verification being done by the "committee" once it reaches 100% completion.
>
>-Deja

Derek, much like I did with Deja's post, I'm going to cross post your suggestions as well since this is as comprehensive a summary as we've had yet.

http://www.dsource.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=316

Many thanks,
- Pragma

In article <cgm6vd$124q$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Derek Parnell says...
>
>Hi All,
>from what I've read over the last few days, there seems to be a bit of
>confusion about a whole range of things. I've tried to distil the ideas and
>I've come up with this ...
>
>*** There are at least four categories of publicly available libraries:
>(a) The "official" standard library that is packaged and shipped with DMD.
>Currently the name of this library is "Phobos"
>(b) An "unofficial" standard library that could be used to replace the
>"official" standard one. We don't have any of these yet, as far as I know.
>(c) A library (module) that could potentially be added to the standard
>library. Currently a lot of these are a part of the "Deimos" project, but
>there may be others that are drifting about.
>(d) A library module/library that is not intended to be added to the
>standard library.
>
>*** The current evolutionary stage of DMD is that Phobos needs to be reviewed and probably a lot of it rewritten.
>
>*** Walter would rather that the work of producing the next generation of official standard library was done by others, however as it would be distributed with his DMD, Walter would need some right to control it's content.
>
>*** A new project, possibly called "Phoenix", is about to be undertaken to review Phobos and build the next generation of the DMD standard library.
>
>*** There is a concern that committees may act unreasonably at times.
>
>*** There is a concern that contributors may act unreasonably at times.
>
>If Phoenix gets going, it will need a written set of guidelines and visions so that contributors will know where they stand and what would be expected of their work. There will need to be a "disputes" process so that everyone involved can seek justice and resolution.
>
>I suspect that peer review will be the most effective way to control the quality and direction of contributions.
>
>And these are only the start of many real issues that would have to be dealt with in such a large project.
>
>-- 
>Derek
>Melbourne, Australia
>27/Aug/04 12:13:34 PM

In article <cghofq$202k$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter says...
>
>I like to build cars,
>just like I like to build compilers, but that doesn't mean I'm so good at
>driving them. (for my latest project, see www.mitymopar.com)

I just noticed the license plate.  Nice touch :)


Sean

"Sean Kelly" <sean@f4.ca> wrote in message news:cgmgmu$16ne$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> In article <cghofq$202k$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter says...
> >
> >I like to build cars,
> >just like I like to build compilers, but that doesn't mean I'm so good at
> >driving them. (for my latest project, see www.mitymopar.com)
>
> I just noticed the license plate.  Nice touch :)

Unfortunately, I've lost the right to that plate because the car has been in storage for 12 years. I have to get a new one.