August 28
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24729

          Issue ID: 24729
           Summary: Can't declare global ref variable
           Product: D
           Version: D2
          Hardware: x86_64
                OS: Linux
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P1
         Component: dmd
          Assignee: nobody@puremagic.com
          Reporter: nick@geany.org

The 2.111 pending changelog says:

> ref and auto ref can now be applied to local, static, extern, and global variables

https://dlang.org/changelog/pending.html#dmd.reflocal

But globals don't seem to work:

struct Foo
{
    int a;
}

Foo foo;
ref f = foo; // Error: static variable `foo` cannot be read at compile time
ref a = foo.a; // Error: static variable `foo` cannot be read at compile time

`f` could be just an alias so to be useful, `a` needs to be supported. Assuming ref globals are supposed to work.

The only ref variable tests I found are in test/runnable/declaration.d, and none are global variables.

--