Hi,

Over the last year, apart from one outlier, have been keeping up with a 2 month major release cadence for DMD, with at least one minor release every off-month.

The following is a rough sketch of the release timeline.

  ... former releases ...
       |
       +-- DMD 2.103.x stable ------+
       |                             \
 DMD 2.104.x development              \
       |       (2023-03-01)            v
       |                       DMD 2.103.0 release (2023-04-01)
       |                                \
       |                                 v
       |                       DMD 2.103.1 release (2023-05-01)
       |
       +-- DMD 2.104.x stable ------+
       |                             \
 DMD 2.105.x development              \
       |       (2023-05-01)            v
       |                       DMD 2.104.0 release (2023-06-01)
       |                                \
       |                                 v
       |                       DMD 2.104.1 release (2023-07-01)
       |                                  \
       |                                   v
       |                       DMD 2.104.2 release (2023-07-15)
       |
       +-- DMD 2.105.x stable ------+
       |                             \
 DMD 2.106.x development              \
       |       (2023-07-15)            v
       |                       DMD 2.105.0 release (2023-08-01)
       |                                \
       |                                 v
       |                       DMD 2.105.1 release (2023-09-01)
       |                                  \
       |                                   v
       |                       DMD 2.105.2 release (2023-09-15)
       |                                    \
       |                                     v
       |                       DMD 2.105.3 release (2023-11-01)
       |
       +-- DMD 2.106.x stable ------+
       |                             \
 DMD 2.107.x development              \
       |       (2023-11-01)            v
       |                      DMD 2.106.0 release (2023-12-01)
       |                                \
       |                                 v
       |                      DMD 2.106.1 release (2024-01-01)
       |
       +-- DMD 2.107.x stable ------+
       |                             \
 DMD 2.108.x development              \
       |        (2024-01-01)           v
       |                      DMD 2.107.0 release (2024-02-01)
       |                                \
       |                                 v
       |                      DMD 2.107.1 release (2024-03-01)
       |
       +-- DMD 2.108.x stable ------+
       |                             \
 DMD 2.109.x development              \
       |        (2024-03-01)           v
       |                       DMD 2.108.0 release (2024-04-01)
       |
       v

Including the beta and release candidates, this adds up to around 30 releases in the last year:

• 5 beta
• 13 release candidates
• 5 major
• 8 point releases.

Moving forward for the next 12 months, is keeping at this pace fine? Should it slow down or speed up?

Iain.

On Monday, 22 April 2024 at 20:14:34 UTC, Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole wrote:

I'm not opposed to using the nightlies if Walter's just implemented new functionality in the compiler. That said, I'd much rather have more release candidates if we're going to cut back on releases. One reason is the difficulty of getting help for a nightly release.

On Monday, 22 April 2024 at 19:56:35 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

I personally hope to be faster and be able to use the latest version immediately, even with a small release every week. I can use the latest version directly.

On Monday, 22 April 2024 at 19:56:35 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

Slow down. There's no need for language changes being so frequent. In fact I see it as a negative. I'd prefer annual releases that are reliable. I've been burned by new releases multiple times and the lack of stability is why I have never been able to use D code for anything significant within the workplace.

By all means keep pushing out regular builds with latest features but I think D should only release a new language version after those changes have been used for a while by people that want to use the latest thing.

Also worth pointing out that language changes effect anyone working on D tooling, IDE integration, or libraries/frameworks. I'd be happier with frequent releases if all changes were supported from day 1 but that's unlikely to ever happen. Things would be better if D releases were put out at the same time as a fully compatible language server and grammar file.

On Monday, 22 April 2024 at 19:56:35 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

It's one of those things where if there are bug fixes or new features I want to use, then the new release can't come soon enough, but otherwise I don't think about it that much.

I would largely defer to the people who actually do the hard work of handling the releases (like yourself). I don't know how much of a burden it is so I don't feel comfortable telling you to speed it up or that we shouldn't slow it down.

On Tuesday, 23 April 2024 at 12:21:04 UTC, jmh530 wrote:

+1

On Monday, 22 April 2024 at 19:56:35 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

As a hobby user of D - personally not really care..
But just to share my idea, how it could be improved:

The speed itself probably not that important. Predictability would be much more desired.
By predictability I mean - in the beginning of the cycle (start of the year) Core team is choosing things that they wanted to implement/fix (high level estimation).
And again only the order of those things is important, not actual dates.
Something like:
In this year we would like to:

• Add string interpolation
• Add tuples
• Add pattern matching (with fix of sumtypes)
• Implement modern concurrency (with fix of allocators)

So community and especially tooling people will be able to plan their work for tools support as well. Of course fixing some bugs is a continuous infinite task.

This approach could eliminate situations like "nobody asking but hey now you have to live with this cool feature! It is easy PR - ready to merge", which is after several years still not ready..

On Monday, 22 April 2024 at 19:56:35 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

Establish a more sophisticated automated testing system so that we can release versions as quickly as we want.