The lack of comments in dmd makes it extremely difficult for newcomers such as myself to contribute.

-Alex

On Sunday, 2 May 2021 at 18:23:16 UTC, 12345swordy wrote:

Do you have any specific questions ?

On Sunday, 2 May 2021 at 18:23:16 UTC, 12345swordy wrote:

the wiki contains some stuff to getting started:

• https://wiki.dlang.org/Starting_as_a_Contributor
• https://github.com/dlang/dmd/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
• https://wiki.dlang.org/DMD_Source_Guide
• https://wiki.dlang.org/Contributing_to_Phobos
• https://wiki.dlang.org/Get_involved

The forums and chats might help you when you get stuck.

On Sunday, 2 May 2021 at 18:23:16 UTC, 12345swordy wrote:

I agree that the code structure is difficult to get into. The code base should have been broken into more files and organized properly in directories. The different layers should also have been made completely separate.

E.g. things that ought to be easy can be challenging, like adding an additional parser should be trivial, and it isn't too difficult, but you have to stick to the same tokens as there seems to be a dependencies in error message generation. So when trying to change things you get this domino-effect... Like having to switch tokens to 16 bits to get enough tokens for two parsers...

Also, just to add a new file-extension type I had to modify multiple source files. So might have to look in multiple unrelated locations in order to figure out what actually happens... And I've only done syntax stuff, as I haven't figured out the best way to rebase the code base as DMD upgrades. Anyone know what strategy works best for rebasing?

What changes are you planning to work on?

On Monday, 3 May 2021 at 07:13:30 UTC, Basile B. wrote:

expresstionsem.d comes to mind.

-Alex

On Monday, 3 May 2021 at 08:05:42 UTC, WebFreak001 wrote:

The wiki is not a replacement for good commenting practice.

-Alex

On Monday, 3 May 2021 at 13:04:03 UTC, 12345swordy wrote:

I think we can all agree there should be more comments. For sure.

But the situation is what it is and we must help fixing it together.

Begin with something small that is not obvious, ask questions and document it :)

(I know this is not the answer one wants, but it's the truth)

On Monday, 3 May 2021 at 12:30:35 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

Honestly another difficult thing to get is the file names themselves.

ty.d, ph2.d, mars.d, melf.d, fp.d, ee.d, e2ir.d, eh.d, el.d, I could go on and on hahaha.

I get that it's probably nice to not have to type a lot in the import statements when you actually know what the all the files are after a year of hacking, but it's really hard to guess where something is.

Also, a lot of comments are rather useless.

/*********************************
 * Loop data structure.
 */

struct loop { ... }

Really comment? I never would have guessed :P

struct loc_t
{
    elem *e;
    int flags; // LFxxxxx
}

Ahhh that's what the flags are, I totally get it now. Thanks comment! :P

There's basically no way to know what something is for without doing a grep for it across the entire codebase..

On Monday, 3 May 2021 at 13:15:06 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:

Btw, just as a comparison (not trying to make a point) I looked at Crystal (because it was discussed earlier) and it actually has even less comments, not even trying in many places.

On Monday, 3 May 2021 at 13:17:29 UTC, Blatnik wrote:

Yes, you have to start in one end and focus on that end, then slowly move to other files to get the structure. Directories would help, better names would help. Doesn't take much time to do either, not sure why nobody has done it yet?

I am not sure how much comments will help (me). I have more an issue with long files, and basic structure.

Grepping and inserting print-statements to see what the flow actually is seems to be the best way to get an intuitive understanding of the structure with the current sourcebase.

(I am not talking about the DMD backend... I have no intention of looking at that one.).

I haven't had many problems related to "what", but I keep to run into the problem of "where???". :-D

But, yes, grep + print-statements... You better like puzzles.