On 1/30/14 4:13 AM, Iain Buclaw wrote:
Hi all,
On March 22, 2014, GDC will turn 10! \o/
This is a great landmark achievement in brevity for GDC, but we still
haven't achieved in my personal opinion any levity of worthy note. So
much to the point I'm beginning to give doubt myself as to how long
things can continue with a bus-factor of me.
Congratulations!
Lets talk history.
In late 2010, Digital Mars raised awareness with the FSF to start the
process of merging GDC into GCC. Nothing then happened until a year
later when the copyright assignment/disclaimers had been completed by
most parties.
More silenced followed for a further year until the first set of patches
were ready for submission, and over the year that followed resolving
implementation issues, most were spent waiting for GCC development to
re-open for feature pulls. Now a further year has gone by with that
merge window open and shut and we are once again two releases away from
seeing any possible inclusion.
Sucks to be an evangelist, eh? :o) The thing is, most of the people in
this forum are blissfully unaware of GNU's process, milestones, and
deadlines. I know it's unpleasant to do so, but one thing to do would be
to overcommunicate. There's a lot to be said about reminding people,
time and again, about an impending deadline and what they can do to
help. Messages in with titles like the samples below would make a world
of difference:
[GDC] Four pulls up for review, aiming at GNU acceptance in three months
[GDC] Help needed: front-end pull, blocks GNU acceptance in two months
[GDC] URGENT: three weeks to GNU deadline, please review!
etc.
This kind of work is as important as the technical work you're doing
(actually more important right now). It is true that more people would
see others get the work done and they just download the GNU suite with
GDC in it. But there's plenty of evidence there are many collaborators
who are eager to help and simply don't have any information on what
exactly which rocks to lift and where to take them. You need to be the
guy coordinating that, and once per decade is not enough :o).
On top of this, to this day I am yet to hear that the assignment papers
have been completed by the original author, which would be a major
blocker in itself.
Who's that guy and what code did he write? If no response, let's redo
his work. We should not be afraid of it.
Alarm bells should be ringing, but at times there seems to be an
indifference from the core community on the matter, as if letting a
valued D compiler coming up to 10 years of age go awry because of a lack
of TLC is O.K.
(TLC = tender loving care?)
An increasing number of people depend on GDC for getting work done.
Including a couple of projects here at Facebook. Yet the simple reality
is that even if I summoned TODAY one of our engineers with "get on
helping gdc full time", that engineer would have absolutely no idea
where to start.
Before this comes to sound like a death note, please be rest assured
that my continued contribution shall remain, but some form of serious
support really is needed to speed up process and development if we are
even going to achieve any target we have set our sights on.
Lets discuss what we can positively do about the situation and start
working together to a pillar goal in D's continued success. Unless the
more proactive thing to do would just be to walk in-front of that
morning or afternoon bus instead of board it. :)
Absolutely! And your note is a great breaker of the thundering silence
around working together to get gdc where it belongs.
That being a large endeavor, there's one time-honored way to address it:
divide it into smaller steps. So here are a few thoughts:
* Use this forum for EVERYTHING related to gdc, EXCLUSIVELY. Prefix
everything with [gdc] so nobody will complain about being spammed.
* Keep people posted about ALL upcoming milestones and deadlines of the
relevant gnu process.
* Find the SMALLEST indivisible step that would help push gdc toward
integration, file it under bugzilla, and tag it with "gdc". Repeat this
many times.
* Ask the community for help NOT on a large matter. Ask for help for
EACH SMALL STEP that a competent person can get on to. I bet many in
this community read your anniversary message and were like, "wow,
tricky..." and back to browsing. I take it
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/2200 and
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/2194 are two
important ones, is that correct?
I'll do my best on my side to help with very concrete bits, i.e. put
bounties on important issues or have legal contact people for
signatures. But I need to know!
Andrei
