On Wednesday, 19 December 2012 at 21:30:44 UTC, Andrei
Alexandrescu wrote:
On 12/19/12 4:23 PM, foobar wrote:
On Wednesday, 19 December 2012 at 20:51:57 UTC, deadalnix
wrote:
On Wednesday, 19 December 2012 at 19:56:47 UTC, Rob T wrote:
Do we all agree that we need a "stable" branch?
No. Stable isn't a boolean criteria. You'll find different
degree of
stability going from not so stable (dev version) to very
stable (dead
project).
The wiki already mention a process with a branch per version
of the
software.
Let's generalize this point for the sake of reaching consensus
- we need
_at least one_ "stable" branch which is separate from
"staging". We are
still conflicted as to what should be the maximum amount. For
the
record, I'm with the camp advocating at most a fixed amount
countable on
one hand. That's an O(1) with a very small constant as opposed
to the
O(n) suggestion by Andrei. I hope Andrei appreciates the order
of
efficiency here.
I agree with one "stable" branch.
Andrei
That's great!
What about the other high level points summarized eloquently by
H. S. Teoh?
Any other high level points or goals the process should
incorporate?
Personally, I think the whole pre-development stage needs to get
looks at -
Specifically having some sort of at least high-level *binding*
planning - road map, mile stones, todo lists. This should give
more weight to DIPs.
DIPs at the moment have no weight whatsoever. The attributes
showed all the major flows in the decision making process:
1. Feature idea comes up in discussion.
2. Feature was discussed heavily by the community reaching some
design consensus.
3. Plan is abandoned/forgotten due to Walter's objections - not
to the design but the idea itself.
4. Feature comes up again in discussion, thus returning to point
1 above in infinite loop.
** 5. After many cycles spanning years, the community accepts
that the feature will never be added despite a consensus and
constant demand.
5.1 Feature is added by surprise with deviations from consensus
design, optionally integrates purely with other parts of the
language.
5.1.1 Feature is final!
Another prime example is the auto-ref feature which we are stuck
with because Walter apparently understood differently from what
you intended.
This is highly coupled with Walter, making it very hard to agree
on a high level design and delegate its implementation to other
developers. As far as I see, No major feature was ever
implemented by someone other than Walter and he has final say on
all design decisions.
I agree with Walter's motives, he wants to stabilize the language
and by resisting to feature suggestions he sets a very high bar
for any major change. That is a good thing. The problem is that
it all happens in his head and not in plain sight. The community
has no idea what his plans are, I'm not convinced that even you
get all the details. That means no planning ahead and no
delegation. Had we known that Walter sign off featureX but just
doesn't have the time to implement it, than it still would be on
the official *binding* todo list and someone else would be able
to implement this feature. As the situation now stands, no one
will bother doing any significant work if it has a high chance of
being entirely dismissed by Walter.
