On Thursday, 13 December 2012 at 23:47:56 UTC, Walter Bright
wrote:
I understand that some of you may be frustrated by my giving
their needs priority, […]
It's *not* your choice of priorities which strikes me as odd,
it's that the situations seems like you made an objectively bad
technical decision for no good reason, and refuse to back off
after other people have made you aware of the consequences.
In order to make your reasoning easier to understand for other
people, could you maybe answer the following questions, setting
aside all the other previously mentioned points (supporting an
unreleased version, etc.) for the moment?
1. How much work would it be for the guys at Remedy Games to
convert their codebase from [] to @()?
2. What is your plan moving forward, i.e. how to you intend to
handle deprecation/removal of the feature?
3. Why is the message you introduced a warning instead of a
normal deprecation error?
———
For 1., I would guess at most something like half an hour for a
large codebase where the feature is used pervasively (you just
keep editing/compiling until there are no more syntax errors),
which is why I can't quite understand the fuzz you are making
about keeping the feature. And even if they cannot switch right
now, as the Remedy guys are obviously willing to use experimental
compiler versions, can't they just use a patched version until
they have made the switch?
I'm pretty much in the dark about 2. and 3., but let me note that
the questions don't even arise if we just remove the syntax and
call it a day.
Let me also repeat the most important point: If we release 2.061
like this, DMD will silently accept the old syntax, so your
decision will actually lead to *more* breakage when the feature
is removed in the future.
David
