On 04/10/13 12:02, John Colvin wrote:
I propose that the current review process be redirected to a new target package in the phobos repo, stdx, which would then have a separate review process for inclusion in std.
As you say, this has been proposed before and I think the objection was along the lines that in practice, so many people would just use stdx (because they wanted those features NOW, NOW, NOW!) that you'd have the same backwards compatibility issues arising there -- you'd wind up with the same fear of breaking change and deprecation as we currently have in the standard library, and it would also cause breaking change if stdx.somemodule was approved and moved to std.somemodule.
I remember someone pointed to a similar "experimental" module namespace in Java, which effectively became a standard namespace in this way.
Stdx would occupy a space between phobos and unaffiliated packages, allowing for subtle (i.e. missed during initial review) but critical problems requiring breakage to be identified BEFORE inclusion in the standard library proper. I believe providing this official stepping stone for new modules will result in significantly wider usage and testing, benefiting phobos, D and it's community.
There is an alternative risk -- that people will be more inclined to just throw stuff over the wall into stdx because, hey, it's an experimental/testing area, the whole idea is for people to try out imperfect code and work out what's wrong with it ...
... but then people are kind of locked into that imperfect code, because even if it's imperfect it still provides something that no other library/module does, and they and their code suffer from the breaking changes all the same.
I am aware that this is not a new idea at all. I thought it was worth presenting with a clean slate.
I've presented Devil's Advocate positions above, but of course it was worth re-raising the idea. Anything that does in practice raise the bar of Phobos quality is very welcome.
