On Thursday, 2 November 2023 at 19:30:58 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
The entire reason that it was added to the language was to be
able to split up existing modules without breaking code. And it
does that well.
No, it doesn't do that well at all. In fact, it does that so
extremely poorly that (as you might recall) there were a very
large number of support requests shortly after Phobos started
using it about broken builds, since it would keep the old file
and the new file when you updated and this stupid, idiotic design
can't handle that situation.
This only subsided because enough time has passed that nobody
tries using it to break up existing modules anymore.
It is just a *terrible* design that never should have passed
review. It is randomly inconsistent with the rest of the language
and this manifests as several bugs.
(including but not limited to:
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14687 doesn't work with
.di
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17699 breaks if you try
to use it for its intended purpose
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20563 error messages hit
random problems
<can't find the link> all-at-once vs separate compilation of
package leads to inconsistent reflection results
im sure the list went on if i spent a few more minutes looking
for my archives)
package.d is indeed completely unnecessary for creating a
module that publicly imports other modules in order to be able
to import a single module and get several modules.
Yeah, it is a terrible feature that is poorly designed, hackily
implemented, and serves no legitimate use case.
