The phobos documentation states that the odbc modules:

etc.c.odbc.sql
etc.c.odbc.sqlext
etc.c.odbc.sqltypes
etc.c.odbc.sqlucode

will be removed in Feb 2022 and I should instead use core.sys.windows but ODBC isn't a Windows only thing so this seems a bit odd.

Changing the module locations wouldn't be so bad if changing my imports didn't also break my code.

Also all the modules in core.sys.windows have version (Windows) in them, including src/core/sys/windows/odbcinst.d:

https://github.com/dlang/druntime/commit/136ff8cd0c8ec300e9e1d177a94b336cf526d9ff#diff-b96154f02e79b2aab93b614dce927ff24deac3cfea629fb456bf8a95526bcbb8

which again isn't ideal seeing as I want to use odbc from Linux.

Can someone please rethink this planned removal of etc.c.odbc.*

Also, the commit that marked etc.c.odbc.* as scheduled for removal also deleted a ton of code and changed behaviour at the same time. Typically a deprecation is supposed to be done a good few releases before making breaking changes.

It was this commit in phobos that caused problems:

https://github.com/dlang/phobos/commit/88fd21e7368e8e2158a6ac75d43587c77886d6dd

On Sunday, 23 May 2021 at 01:22:19 UTC, singingbush wrote:

I'm guessing it's because Windows is the only OS that ships these header files as part of the base installation. On Linux, they're provided by a third-party package (e.g. on Debian it's libodbc).

On Sunday, 23 May 2021 at 03:31:27 UTC, Paul Backus wrote:

For me that doesn't indicate that it should be in core.sys.windows, it indicates that either:

A: The installers for other platforms need to ensure appropriate dependencies are installed
B: odbc has no business being in core D language and should just be something that needs building independently, probably as a dub package.

On Wednesday, 26 May 2021 at 10:35:16 UTC, singingbush wrote:

I'd say B. As far as I am aware, none of the currently active Phobos contributors is interested in ODBC, so it is a disservice to our users to claim that this functionality is supported. It should be moved to separate repo maintained by people who actually use it.

On Wednesday, 26 May 2021 at 12:03:06 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

That's why I'm posting the problem ddbc does support odbc. It allows me to use MS SQL from a Linux system. It currently relies on etc.c.odbc and the proposed move to core.sys.windows completely breaks it.

Rather than have odbc move from etc.c to core.sys.windows, I feel it should be dropped alltogther and be given a longer time frame for ddbc to do away with reliance on etc.c.odbc. Feb 2022 doesn't give a lot of time, a change like this should much more notice.

It's things like this that stop people being able to use D in the workplace. The D introduces breaking changes far too often. It's completely unfair to put this demand on developers. I've got applications to work on, I don't want to have to spend so much time working around problems that have been created by the language itself.

On Friday, 28 May 2021 at 15:50:15 UTC, singingbush wrote:

If I’m not mistaken this doesn’t seem to be a deprecation since the code was moved from its original location. A deprecation would have left the code in place in possibly a maintenance-only mode and remove it next February after the warning period.

I sympathize with your frustration here.