Hello,

A couple of small requests, as one who is not skilled enough to work on GDC itself or to go compiling compilers (!) but who is very interested in the success of GDC ...

First -- is there a chance of some kind of regular status update from GDC on this forum?  Say, a brief bi-weekly mail along the lines of, "These are the problems we solved, these are the issues we still have, these are new problems that arose ...".  It would be great to have that kind of report.  I know there is the microblog, but it's not quite as effective as an email on the official D forums.

Second -- is there a chance of the D Language Packagers team on Ubuntu providing packages for gdc2 betas? :-)

Third -- (this is no longer a couple of requests, but never mind...) -- what happened to the plans for a fund for GDC?  Has it been organised?  How can one contribute?

Thanks and best wishes,

    -- Joe

Joseph Wakeling Wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> A couple of small requests, as one who is not skilled enough to work on GDC itself or to go compiling compilers (!) but who is very interested in the success of GDC ...
> 

One need not be skilled to help out. Identifying bugs and providing minimal code and steps to reproduce is usually a good start.

> Second -- is there a chance of the D Language Packagers team on Ubuntu providing packages for gdc2 betas? :-)
> 

I originally uploaded gdc as version 2, but the problems with it outweighed the positives (that and it broke every D software package in the Debian and Ubuntu repository), so got round to sorting out (kinda) the big show-stopper and switched it back to D1.

Am not opposed to having a separately named gdc2 package in a ppa, however. That can be arranged.


> Thanks and best wishes,
> 
>     -- Joe

Iain Buclaw wrote:
> One need not be skilled to help out. Identifying bugs and providing minimal code and steps to reproduce is usually a good start.

I'd very much like to start writing with GDC 2 so this I can certainly offer.

> Am not opposed to having a separately named gdc2 package in a ppa, however. That can be arranged.

I'd really appreciate having that.  Thank you! :-)

Best wishes,

    -- Joe

Joseph Wakeling Wrote:

> Iain Buclaw wrote:
> > One need not be skilled to help out. Identifying bugs and providing minimal code and steps to reproduce is usually a good start.
> 
> I'd very much like to start writing with GDC 2 so this I can certainly offer.
> 
> > Am not opposed to having a separately named gdc2 package in a ppa, however. That can be arranged.
> 
> I'd really appreciate having that.  Thank you! :-)
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
>     -- Joe


Well, here is the page that links to the PPA. https://launchpad.net/~gdc-drivers
Package still needs some loving - fleshing it out of gdc into it's own gdc2 is probably a todo, and clean up applied patches, as a number are not relevant to D2.

Anyone interested in helping out, just PM me.

Regards
Iain

> Well, here is the page that links to the PPA. https://launchpad.net/~gdc-drivers Package still needs some loving - fleshing it out of gdc into it's own gdc2 is probably a todo, and clean up applied patches, as a number are not relevant to D2.

Thanks very much!  Will try it out and get back to you on my experience.

> Anyone interested in helping out, just PM me.

... maybe worth coordinating with the D Language Packagers team?  Rather than a dedicated gdc PPA, in the longer term it might be better to organise D stuff into a 'D-language' PPA for stable packages (up-to-date ldc, gdc, libtango, ...) and 'D-language-beta' for bleeding-edge stuff like this.

You mentioned that this gdc breaks other D packages on the system -- what should I watch out for?

Thanks again and best wishes,

    -- Joe

Joseph Wakeling Wrote:

> > Well, here is the page that links to the PPA. https://launchpad.net/~gdc-drivers Package still needs some loving - fleshing it out of gdc into it's own gdc2 is probably a todo, and clean up applied patches, as a number are not relevant to D2.
> 
> Thanks very much!  Will try it out and get back to you on my experience.
> 
> > Anyone interested in helping out, just PM me.
> 
> ... maybe worth coordinating with the D Language Packagers team?  Rather than a dedicated gdc PPA, in the longer term it might be better to organise D stuff into a 'D-language' PPA for stable packages (up-to-date ldc, gdc, libtango, ...) and 'D-language-beta' for bleeding-edge stuff like this.
> 

I *am* the D Packagers team in Ubuntu and Debian - it is only me (for the moment). :-)

> You mentioned that this gdc breaks other D packages on the system -- what should I watch out for?
> 
> Thanks again and best wishes,
> 
>     -- Joe

It is pretty much just general language changes that are not backwards compatible with D1 that caused the most issues. Nothing else really.

If you write a program for the D2 compiler, it will work with the D2 compiler.

Regards
Iain

> I *am* the D Packagers team in Ubuntu and Debian - it is only me
> (for the moment). :-)

I did not see your name here ... :-) https://launchpad.net/~d-language-packagers

... and many thanks for your work.  I'm very glad to see D making it into Debian and Ubuntu.

Best wishes,

    -- Joe