OMFG, this is a truly glorious day, and what a delightful coincidence!
Thank the gods for their terribly late but eventual insight!

On Thu, 15 Aug 2024 at 06:11, Nick Treleaven via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
On Wednesday, 14 August 2024 at 14:26:34 UTC, Manu wrote:
> This is kinda rhetorical, since I've asked this a million
> times, and we all know the answer... but seriously; why can't
> we declare ref locals?

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