Re: What's the current state of D?
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 11:07 PM, Daniel Keep wrote: > > I don't think this is sufficient. What we really need is to treat each > part of the version as a complex number. > > In this way, non-stable releases can have imaginary components to > distinguish them from release versions. > > So the current series of D 2.x compilers would become D 2i.x. Release > candidates would be D 2i.xi. And of course, a stable release which has > unreleased modifications could be D 1.x+yi Why restrict yourself to a two-dimensional complex plane when we have quaternions and octonions?
Re: What's the current state of D?
bearophile wrote: > Leandro Lucarella: > >> I think this is another problem with D, version naming is really confusing >> and lame. You can't know anything from a D version number.< > > Yes, improving such small things is positive. > So I suggest to start using a "language.version.releaseStatus" numbering > scheme for D2 (and maybe for D2 too). > > So the current D2 becomes: > 2.0.30alpha > > and the current D1 becomes: > 1.0.45 > > Once D2 gets out of alpha it may become: > 2.1.0 > > Bye, > bearophile I don't think this is sufficient. What we really need is to treat each part of the version as a complex number. In this way, non-stable releases can have imaginary components to distinguish them from release versions. So the current series of D 2.x compilers would become D 2i.x. Release candidates would be D 2i.xi. And of course, a stable release which has unreleased modifications could be D 1.x+yi So much more intuitive than the current system plus a big, red label reading "WARNING: not stable, do not use." -- Daniel
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright: >As far as I can tell, nobody cared about array ops.< >So that leaves contract inheritance. I find it hard to see how not having it >is a showstopper for using D1. Contracts in D haven't been the big win I >thought they might be at first. They aren't use much at all. There are a lot >of other issues that do make a big difference, and those are the issues that >get attention.< This is interesting. Some features are a failure because they need to be tried and tested before knowing they are not good, because you can't tell everything from theory. Once you know they aren't good you can remove them. Other features are good, but in practice they aren't much used. Such low usage may come from various sources: - They aren't part of the culture of most D programmers (I am thinking about useful things like typedef, nested functions and closures). This can be partially solved adding the D site tutorial pages about the usefulness & purposes & several usage examples of typedef, nested functions and closures. - They are clumsy to use, maybe because their syntax is long, ugly or not easy to understand. This can be solved with a better design, like asking the community to design the syntax of a feature before implementing it. And before that, asking people what features they want/need more in the first place. We'll have to create another thread of the most wanted things. - They aren't well integrated with other features of the D language, so such features become like islands, so they can't become much useful, and in the D body such feature-transplant has a reject. In a language like Chapel array operations are natural, and in a language like Eiffel contracts are natural, because in both language such features are well integrated with other features of the language. This can be solved adding more bridges from such features to other parts of the language and making the syntax of the new features better merged with the other parts of the language. I have never used array ops yet, but for example I'd like to have array comprehensions (lazy too), they are something I'd use every day in D (Walter is currently focused in adding features that allow to write big programs with D. But it's good to also improve the language to make it fitter for small things too. It's the difference between scaling up and scaling down. Both directions are useful, because big programs are written of small chunks of code. And an array comprehension allows you to write smaller class methods/functions, reducing the overall line count of the program). - Few more mixed things that I'd like to see done regarding D: - A simpler, cleaner and easier to use site. The current site is a mess. I am able to list where I think it needs to be improved. - Having dmd source code online on Git. - Remove some things that are less useful from D2. - To give more attention to what D programmers want and ask for. From what I have seen the community here is quite smart, so it's often better to implement what many of them ask for, instead of other things few/none ask for. Often smart people are right in asking for faster horses instead of a car. - Having an official D front-end written in D is something good, but now it's too much early, I think. - Reducing the number of D newsgroups, and renaming few of them can be good. Bye, bearophile
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella: >I think this is another problem with D, version naming is really confusing and >lame. You can't know anything from a D version number.< Yes, improving such small things is positive. So I suggest to start using a "language.version.releaseStatus" numbering scheme for D2 (and maybe for D2 too). So the current D2 becomes: 2.0.30alpha and the current D1 becomes: 1.0.45 Once D2 gets out of alpha it may become: 2.1.0 Bye, bearophile
Re: What's the current state of D?
BCS wrote: > Hello Georg, > >> Well (still resisting opening Pandora's box), I see Public Domain >> as a superset of any of the OSS &co licenses. Oper source simply means >> (to me, anyway), free to use anyway you want, including selling and >> incorporating into other people's apps. >> >> So, licencing somethign as Public Domain, ought to make FSF and >> others, to be able (er, willing would be the word) to incorporate the >> code, as they see fit. >> > > The issue might be that the GPL code forbids some thing and unless FSF > owns the original code, the question can come up of if someone is > misusing the GPL copy or correctly using the public domain copy. Suggestion.. avoid speculation about the FSF motives or requirements and the reasons behind them. Let's let whoever can/will pursue it with them and see how it unfolds.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Hello Georg, Well (still resisting opening Pandora's box), I see Public Domain as a superset of any of the OSS &co licenses. Oper source simply means (to me, anyway), free to use anyway you want, including selling and incorporating into other people's apps. So, licencing somethign as Public Domain, ought to make FSF and others, to be able (er, willing would be the word) to incorporate the code, as they see fit. The issue might be that the GPL code forbids some thing and unless FSF owns the original code, the question can come up of if someone is misusing the GPL copy or correctly using the public domain copy.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Christopher Wright wrote: Georg Wrede wrote: Knowing what (*seriously excuse* the wording here) fascists the FSF guys are, they obviously assume similar behavior of any opposition. That explains why they appear paranoid and unreasonable in their demands of the copyright statements for any code even remotely considered for inclusion. Copyright assignment makes management a hell of a lot easier for them. They have the authority to sue anyone who uses any part of their projects, and they don't have to go through their records to determine this. This is one reason why public domain code is not particularly interesting for them. Of course, they can put a comment the relevant code to the effect that the original is in the public domain, which should take care of the problem. Well (still resisting opening Pandora's box), I see Public Domain as a superset of any of the OSS &co licenses. Oper source simply means (to me, anyway), free to use anyway you want, including selling and incorporating into other people's apps. So, licencing somethign as Public Domain, ought to make FSF and others, to be able (er, willing would be the word) to incorporate the code, as they see fit.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Georg Wrede wrote: Knowing what (*seriously excuse* the wording here) fascists the FSF guys are, they obviously assume similar behavior of any opposition. That explains why they appear paranoid and unreasonable in their demands of the copyright statements for any code even remotely considered for inclusion. Copyright assignment makes management a hell of a lot easier for them. They have the authority to sue anyone who uses any part of their projects, and they don't have to go through their records to determine this. This is one reason why public domain code is not particularly interesting for them. Of course, they can put a comment the relevant code to the effect that the original is in the public domain, which should take care of the problem.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright wrote: Leandro Lucarella wrote: Now the only think to do is wait until Mihail Zenkov answer my mail (no news for now =( ). If he doesn't, just recode the patch and submit it. There doesn't look like there's much to it. My understanding from the FSF is the only concern is with patches that are more than 10 lines. The single line changes here and there in the gdb patch don't need to be redone. The point of making std.demangle public domain is so that other tools can freely incorporate it and support D! OK, Leandro, so quoting to them the above post, and quoting the beginning of the file demangle.d ought to do the trick: * Placed into the Public Domain. ... /* Authors: * Walter Bright, Digital Mars, www.digitalmars.com * Thomas Kuehne * Frits van Bommel --- Knowing what (*seriously excuse* the wording here) fascists the FSF guys are, they obviously assume similar behavior of any opposition. That explains why they appear paranoid and unreasonable in their demands of the copyright statements for any code even remotely considered for inclusion. PS: even if the intent is benign, there's no reason for anti-benign action or attitudes. That's why their track record forced me to use harsh language, above. ((( please don't nobody get me started on this one )))
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: Now the only think to do is wait until Mihail Zenkov answer my mail (no news for now =( ). If he doesn't, just recode the patch and submit it. There doesn't look like there's much to it. My understanding from the FSF is the only concern is with patches that are more than 10 lines. The single line changes here and there in the gdb patch don't need to be redone. The point of making std.demangle public domain is so that other tools can freely incorporate it and support D!
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright, el 12 de mayo a las 10:18 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >Yes, yes, yes, I get the point. I meant Phobos... > > Which is (std.demangle) explicitly public domain. If FSF has a problem with > public domain submissions, please let me know. (The FSF can change one byte > of > it and copyright the "derived work" however way they please, and so can > anyone > else.) I took a quick look at phobos demangle code and it doesn't look similar to the one in the GDB patch. I guess I should checked first, my apologies for bugging you when it looks like you have nothing to do with this patch. I was under the impression that it used your code for some reason. Now the only think to do is wait until Mihail Zenkov answer my mail (no news for now =( ). -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05)
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: Yes, yes, yes, I get the point. I meant Phobos... Which is (std.demangle) explicitly public domain. If FSF has a problem with public domain submissions, please let me know. (The FSF can change one byte of it and copyright the "derived work" however way they please, and so can anyone else.)
Re: What's the current state of D?
dsimcha wrote: == Quote from Frits van Bommel (fvbom...@remwovexcapss.nl)'s article Leandro Lucarella wrote: Isn't the demangle code taken from DMDFE? Why would DMDFE need a demangler? It can just not mangle in the first place :). You need name mangling for templates and function overloading to work. Mangling, yes. Demangling, no. (i.e. anywhere it needs the un-mangled name it can just look it up directly, without running the mangler)
Re: What's the current state of D?
Frits van Bommel, el 12 de mayo a las 16:28 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >Isn't the demangle code taken from DMDFE? > > Why would DMDFE need a demangler? It can just not mangle in the first > place :). Yes, yes, yes, I get the point. I meant Phobos... ¬¬ -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05)
Re: What's the current state of D?
== Quote from Frits van Bommel (fvbom...@remwovexcapss.nl)'s article > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > > Isn't the demangle code taken from DMDFE? > Why would DMDFE need a demangler? It can just not mangle in the first place > :). You need name mangling for templates and function overloading to work.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: Isn't the demangle code taken from DMDFE? Why would DMDFE need a demangler? It can just not mangle in the first place :).
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright wrote: > Ameer Armaly wrote: >> I see. What about the actual "standard library bits" for common tasks >> like file I/O, strings, date and time, filesystem manipulation, etc. >> My main gripe is having two regularly accepted libraries that do the >> same extremely common functions; it makes us look unpolished, >> especially when there is the "community" versus "official" difference >> I mentioned earlier. Why not just merge the two libraries into the one >> D standard library and be done with it? > > That's being done for D2. It is not for D1, as that would break > everyone's code. Well, one runtime library. Anything beyond that isn't at all clear, is it? There's some rather fundamental design differences -- neither right nor wrong -- between Phobos and Tango. I don't see those converging at this point. Regardless, able to sit side by side is still a big step forward. Later, Brad
Re: What's the current state of D?
"Walter Bright" wrote in message news:guakkp$285...@digitalmars.com... > Ameer Armaly wrote: >> I see. What about the actual "standard library bits" for common tasks >> like file I/O, strings, date and time, filesystem manipulation, etc. My >> main gripe is having two regularly accepted libraries that do the same >> extremely common functions; it makes us look unpolished, especially when >> there is the "community" versus "official" difference I mentioned >> earlier. Why not just merge the two libraries into the one D standard >> library and be done with it? > > That's being done for D2. It is not for D1, as that would break everyone's > code. Ah. If we're aiming for one standard library, then I'll shut up and try and understand const.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Ameer Armaly wrote: I see. What about the actual "standard library bits" for common tasks like file I/O, strings, date and time, filesystem manipulation, etc. My main gripe is having two regularly accepted libraries that do the same extremely common functions; it makes us look unpolished, especially when there is the "community" versus "official" difference I mentioned earlier. Why not just merge the two libraries into the one D standard library and be done with it? That's being done for D2. It is not for D1, as that would break everyone's code.
Re: What's the current state of D?
== Quote from Jason House (jason.james.ho...@gmail.com)'s article > Walter Bright Wrote: > > Jason House wrote: > > > There really is only three reasons I'm aware of that stop D2 Tango > > > from existing today: > > > [...] > > > 2. There are bugs that limit how easily Tango can be ported to D2 > > > > > > I've heard this now and then, along with a bugzilla number or two. I've > > fixed every one those problems brought to my attention weeks (months?) ago. > > > > If there are other bugzilla issues that prevent Tango from working with > > D2, please let me know what they are. > > > Obviously, Tango devs should answer, but... > IIRC, the whole "return const" thing is still an issue Yeah, I can see why noone wanted to design a half-baked solution to this before shared was implemented, since that's going to need a similar fix. Shared is coming next release. Therefore, I think it will soon be high time to address this issue.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright Wrote: > Jason House wrote: > > There really is only three reasons I'm aware of that stop D2 Tango > > from existing today: > > [...] > > 2. There are bugs that limit how easily Tango can be ported to D2 > > > I've heard this now and then, along with a bugzilla number or two. I've > fixed every one those problems brought to my attention weeks (months?) ago. > > If there are other bugzilla issues that prevent Tango from working with > D2, please let me know what they are. > Obviously, Tango devs should answer, but... IIRC, the whole "return const" thing is still an issue
Re: What's the current state of D?
"Walter Bright" wrote in message news:guafcv$1tm...@digitalmars.com... > Ameer Armaly wrote: >>> It has been bashed out for D2. Doing such changes to D1 will break >>> everyone's D1 code, which destroys its mission of being stable. >> Really? I was under the impression that Tango will be ported to D2 to >> continue the battle of standard libs but if I'm mistaken, then it's a lot >> better than I originally figured. > > D2 has the "druntime" core which is designed to be the common root of > Phobos and Tango. Switching to it involved a lot of changes to Phobos that > broke existing user code. I see. What about the actual "standard library bits" for common tasks like file I/O, strings, date and time, filesystem manipulation, etc. My main gripe is having two regularly accepted libraries that do the same extremely common functions; it makes us look unpolished, especially when there is the "community" versus "official" difference I mentioned earlier. Why not just merge the two libraries into the one D standard library and be done with it? I have yet to see a language with two standard libraries like we have now. [1] Thanks though for what's already been done. Ameer [1] I haven't really seen that many though- probably about a dozen.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Jason House wrote: There really is only three reasons I'm aware of that stop D2 Tango from existing today: > [...] 2. There are bugs that limit how easily Tango can be ported to D2 I've heard this now and then, along with a bugzilla number or two. I've fixed every one those problems brought to my attention weeks (months?) ago. If there are other bugzilla issues that prevent Tango from working with D2, please let me know what they are.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Ameer Armaly wrote: It has been bashed out for D2. Doing such changes to D1 will break everyone's D1 code, which destroys its mission of being stable. Really? I was under the impression that Tango will be ported to D2 to continue the battle of standard libs but if I'm mistaken, then it's a lot better than I originally figured. D2 has the "druntime" core which is designed to be the common root of Phobos and Tango. Switching to it involved a lot of changes to Phobos that broke existing user code.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: Isn't the demangle code taken from DMDFE? It didn't look like it, especially since the DMDFE doesn't have a demangler in it! The one in Phobos is explicitly listed as Public Domain.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Frits van Bommel, el 11 de mayo a las 22:15 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >GDB people have spoken (I don't see you subscribed to the bug report so > >I transcribe the comment from GDB): > >-- > >For a patch this size we would need copyright assignments from all > >the authors of the patch. I would suggest emailing the gdb list > >and asking for the paperwork; one of the maintainers will get you started. > >Also, send the patch to the gdb-patches list, as described here: > >http://sourceware.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/~checkout~/src/gdb/CONTRIBUTE?content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup&cvsroot=src > >gdb doesn't really use bugzilla for patch tracking, much. > >I glanced quickly at the patch; it will need some reformatting and it will > >need to be rebased to the current cvs. It may require other changes, too, > >but I didn't read that closely. > >-- > >When all licensing issues are resolved I can do any adjustments to the > >patch to comply with GDB coding style and rebase it to current CVS if the > >original author is missing. > > If the original author is missing, you have a bigger problem. He > presumably needs to sign the paperwork they mentioned... Yes, I meant if he is alive and willing to give the rights to GDB but don't want to bother to fix the style and rebase the patch himself. -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) Skepticism is the beginning of failure
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright, el 11 de mayo a las 14:03 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >>Hoping is one thing, but submitting patches, bug reports, etc. to the tool > >>developers is much more effective! > >Sure, but people already done that and got ignore. I'm just glad you only > >overlooked that mail and you're willing to help to iron out any licensing > >issue. > > I'm not the tool vendor for gdb. I also looked over the patches to gdb > and don't see anything that requires approval or action from me. Isn't the demangle code taken from DMDFE? -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) Y2K hmm, nothing major has happend, what an anticlimax yeah really sucks I expected for Australia to sink into the sea or something but nn
Re: What's the current state of D?
Ameer Armaly Wrote: > > "Walter Bright" wrote in message > news:gua3u3$19c...@digitalmars.com... > > Ameer Armaly wrote: > >> Yes. This is the showstopper for me and what caused me to quietly walk > >> away from D to begin with. In my opinion the fact that having two > >> runtimes is not only tolerable but acceptable as normal has and will > >> continue to hurt D1. We have Phobos, the "official" runtime and then we > >> have Tango, the "community" runtime. Moreover having two runtimes casts > >> doubt on the state of D as a whole; if we can't even decide on a uniform > >> runtime then people will wonder what other unknown traps of > >> incompleteness are in store. The fact that nobody bothered to work all > >> this out makes perfect sense- it's a lot more fun to be hashing out new > >> features- but if we intend to gain some semblance of mainstream respect > >> then it will be much easier with a single robust runtime. > > > > It has been bashed out for D2. Doing such changes to D1 will break > > everyone's D1 code, which destroys its mission of being stable. > Really? I was under the impression that Tango will be ported to D2 to > continue the battle of standard libs but if I'm mistaken, then it's a lot > better than I originally figured. The druntime project is mostly a port of the Tango runtime to D2. On top of that, Don has ported the Tango math stuff to D2 Phobos. The stage is set for D2 Tango to be smaller and be installed alongside Phobos in D2. There really is only three reasons I'm aware of that stop D2 Tango from existing today: 1. There is no practical way to write code that compiles with both D1 and D2 2. There are bugs that limit how easily Tango can be ported to D2 3. D2 is a moving target I've volunteered to fix D2 Tango when #3 is an issue, but that's not enough to make D2 a reality.
Re: What's the current state of D?
"Walter Bright" wrote in message news:gua3u3$19c...@digitalmars.com... > Ameer Armaly wrote: >> Yes. This is the showstopper for me and what caused me to quietly walk >> away from D to begin with. In my opinion the fact that having two >> runtimes is not only tolerable but acceptable as normal has and will >> continue to hurt D1. We have Phobos, the "official" runtime and then we >> have Tango, the "community" runtime. Moreover having two runtimes casts >> doubt on the state of D as a whole; if we can't even decide on a uniform >> runtime then people will wonder what other unknown traps of >> incompleteness are in store. The fact that nobody bothered to work all >> this out makes perfect sense- it's a lot more fun to be hashing out new >> features- but if we intend to gain some semblance of mainstream respect >> then it will be much easier with a single robust runtime. > > It has been bashed out for D2. Doing such changes to D1 will break > everyone's D1 code, which destroys its mission of being stable. Really? I was under the impression that Tango will be ported to D2 to continue the battle of standard libs but if I'm mistaken, then it's a lot better than I originally figured.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Ameer Armaly wrote: Yes. This is the showstopper for me and what caused me to quietly walk away from D to begin with. In my opinion the fact that having two runtimes is not only tolerable but acceptable as normal has and will continue to hurt D1. We have Phobos, the "official" runtime and then we have Tango, the "community" runtime. Moreover having two runtimes casts doubt on the state of D as a whole; if we can't even decide on a uniform runtime then people will wonder what other unknown traps of incompleteness are in store. The fact that nobody bothered to work all this out makes perfect sense- it's a lot more fun to be hashing out new features- but if we intend to gain some semblance of mainstream respect then it will be much easier with a single robust runtime. It has been bashed out for D2. Doing such changes to D1 will break everyone's D1 code, which destroys its mission of being stable.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: Hoping is one thing, but submitting patches, bug reports, etc. to the tool developers is much more effective! Sure, but people already done that and got ignore. I'm just glad you only overlooked that mail and you're willing to help to iron out any licensing issue. I'm not the tool vendor for gdb. I also looked over the patches to gdb and don't see anything that requires approval or action from me. GDB people have spoken (I don't see you subscribed to the bug report so I transcribe the comment from GDB): -- For a patch this size we would need copyright assignments from all the authors of the patch. I would suggest emailing the gdb list and asking for the paperwork; one of the maintainers will get you started. Also, send the patch to the gdb-patches list, as described here: http://sourceware.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/~checkout~/src/gdb/CONTRIBUTE?content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup&cvsroot=src gdb doesn't really use bugzilla for patch tracking, much. I glanced quickly at the patch; it will need some reformatting and it will need to be rebased to the current cvs. It may require other changes, too, but I didn't read that closely. -- When all licensing issues are resolved I can do any adjustments to the patch to comply with GDB coding style and rebase it to current CVS if the original author is missing. It would be great if you could be the champion for this and get it through. It'll help out a lot!
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: GDB people have spoken (I don't see you subscribed to the bug report so I transcribe the comment from GDB): -- For a patch this size we would need copyright assignments from all the authors of the patch. I would suggest emailing the gdb list and asking for the paperwork; one of the maintainers will get you started. Also, send the patch to the gdb-patches list, as described here: http://sourceware.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/~checkout~/src/gdb/CONTRIBUTE?content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup&cvsroot=src gdb doesn't really use bugzilla for patch tracking, much. I glanced quickly at the patch; it will need some reformatting and it will need to be rebased to the current cvs. It may require other changes, too, but I didn't read that closely. -- When all licensing issues are resolved I can do any adjustments to the patch to comply with GDB coding style and rebase it to current CVS if the original author is missing. If the original author is missing, you have a bigger problem. He presumably needs to sign the paperwork they mentioned...
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright, el 11 de mayo a las 11:46 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >I just hope one day in a near future we have D support in the tools I use > >daily to develop as good as C++ so I can have a chance to convince my boss > >to be able to use it at work =) > > Hoping is one thing, but submitting patches, bug reports, etc. to the tool > developers is much more effective! Sure, but people already done that and got ignore. I'm just glad you only overlooked that mail and you're willing to help to iron out any licensing issue. GDB people have spoken (I don't see you subscribed to the bug report so I transcribe the comment from GDB): -- For a patch this size we would need copyright assignments from all the authors of the patch. I would suggest emailing the gdb list and asking for the paperwork; one of the maintainers will get you started. Also, send the patch to the gdb-patches list, as described here: http://sourceware.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/~checkout~/src/gdb/CONTRIBUTE?content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup&cvsroot=src gdb doesn't really use bugzilla for patch tracking, much. I glanced quickly at the patch; it will need some reformatting and it will need to be rebased to the current cvs. It may require other changes, too, but I didn't read that closely. -- When all licensing issues are resolved I can do any adjustments to the patch to comply with GDB coding style and rebase it to current CVS if the original author is missing. -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05)
Re: What's the current state of D?
"Leandro Lucarella" wrote in message news:20090509161148.ga23...@homero.springfield.home... > The Tango vs. Phobos is still a *BIG* issue for D1. I think don't > addressing that is a huge error. It's only hurting D1 and preventing its > adoption. > Yes. This is the showstopper for me and what caused me to quietly walk away from D to begin with. In my opinion the fact that having two runtimes is not only tolerable but acceptable as normal has and will continue to hurt D1. We have Phobos, the "official" runtime and then we have Tango, the "community" runtime. Moreover having two runtimes casts doubt on the state of D as a whole; if we can't even decide on a uniform runtime then people will wonder what other unknown traps of incompleteness are in store. The fact that nobody bothered to work all this out makes perfect sense- it's a lot more fun to be hashing out new features- but if we intend to gain some semblance of mainstream respect then it will be much easier with a single robust runtime. Ameer
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: I just hope one day in a near future we have D support in the tools I use daily to develop as good as C++ so I can have a chance to convince my boss to be able to use it at work =) Hoping is one thing, but submitting patches, bug reports, etc. to the tool developers is much more effective!
Re: What's the current state of D?
Steve Teale wrote: Georg Wrede Wrote: Things we have (like every binary release [and I assume, an implicit promise of keeping it that way] downloadable forever), the source code to /both/ the front end and the back end distributed every time -- for both reading example usage, learning by looking at unittests, and for a deep understanding of both the compiler and the library code in detail, ... it's stuff like this we don't advertise enough. (( Of course, not to mention actual language highlights that are really smashing! But they're outside of this post.)) And the parts of D that are unique, we don't see them splashed all over the net either. It can and should be possible without the PR budget of Oracle, too. Anybody over 40 knows that Pascal was an excellent language for programmming classes. (Yes, it was even created for that purpose, originally.) But then, nobody at all knows that out of all "known" languages, D is (by FAR!!) the one a university /should/ choose as the introductory language. Hah, and even fewer can imagine that D is the language they should use in advanced classes! And, thus, virtually nobody knows that being blessed with having originally learned a language that has the strength to carry you all the way from intro to PhD, makes you seriously privileged. And with a robust and solid mother tongue like this, forages into C++, Java, Ruby, Haskell, Scheme, ASM, and the like, will seem like a breeze, and don't destroy or *undo* /the very foundations of/ your world as a programmer. Yes! I may continue to bitch, but you are so right. D is extraordinarily cool! Poa sana as I could say in the domain of my current residency. Somehow we have to advance the announcements and learn newsgroups so that they are primary, and change perceptions such that the "suggestions for the next version of D" newsgroup - currently the main newsgroup - is a specialist affair that most readers think they can safely ignore. I agree. When someone clicks the "D Forum" link on the front page, they should get to the D.learn newsgroup. Also, said link should be more prominent, not tucked away at the bottom of the menu. -Lars
Re: What's the current state of D?
Tomas Lindquist Olsen, el 9 de mayo a las 15:55 me escribiste: > The main feeling I've come to settle on during the soon two years I've > spent with LDC, is: we need a new frontend! D1 and D2 both have these > problems, and they're not going away by themselves. Are you saying Dlang is comming? 8-)~ -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) cederrón. (De CD-ROM, y este sigla del ingl. Compact Disc Read-Only Memory). 1. m. Inform. CD-ROM. -- Real Academia Española
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright, el 10 de mayo a las 21:03 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >In case you missed my other mail, I opened a bug report in GDB bugzilla to > >keep track of the patch: > >http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=10142 > > This is great. I'm glad you're pushing this. I just hope one day in a near future we have D support in the tools I use daily to develop as good as C++ so I can have a chance to convince my boss to be able to use it at work =) -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) Are you such a dreamer? To put the world to rights? I'll stay home forever Where two & two always makes up five
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright, el 10 de mayo a las 20:54 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >Walter Bright, el 10 de mayo a las 15:44 me escribiste: > > > >>Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >> > >There was a thread > >in the NG asking for possible copyright issues to include the GDB patch > >upstream, and it had no answer for example. I don't think you *have* to > >answer that mail, but I think helping this kind of things happening > >instead of ignoring them is good for D promotion too =) > > > Can you point me to that thread? There are an awful lot of posts, and I > miss things. > > >>>I posted it in this very same thread, just before the link to the GDB > >>>patches link. Here it is again: > >>>http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Getting_D_language_patch_into_GDB_82597.html > >>> > >>If someone has a patch ready to submit to GDB, and needs some licensing > >>change for it, I'm happy to provide that. > >> > > > >I've opened a new "bug" in GDB bugzilla to keep track of D support patch. > >It would be great if people that has anything to do with the patch (the > >patch author and Walter, I guess, if the demangle code is from DMD) can > >follow the bug report. > > > > URL, please! http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=10142 > (Also, did you mean to post this in the n.g.?) Yes, sorry! -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) CHINO ATRAPA COTORRAS -- Crónica TV
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: In case you missed my other mail, I opened a bug report in GDB bugzilla to keep track of the patch: http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=10142 This is great. I'm glad you're pushing this.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright, el 10 de mayo a las 15:42 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >Walter Bright, el 10 de mayo a las 11:21 me escribiste: > >I posted it in this very same thread, just before the link to the GDB > >patches link. Here it is again: > >http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Getting_D_language_patch_into_GDB_82597.html > > Thank you. You are welcome. I'm very glad this is taking some attention =) In case you missed my other mail, I opened a bug report in GDB bugzilla to keep track of the patch: http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=10142 > >>Given all the beating of breasts and rending of robes about D1 not being > >>stable and breaking code even when a bug is fixed in it, I just can't > >>see coming out with a new D1 that substantially breaks every existing D1 > >>code base. > >It would break all existing D1 code base? > > I suspect it would break pretty much all the non-trivial code. What are exactly the user-visible changes? > >If the compiler were really open source, and the frontend were in a public > >repository, and fixes would be well separated patches, you wouldn't have > >to maintain 3 D version. > > It's not just me, it's the poor sap who has to maintain 3 different > versions of his library. This is not fixable by adding a aliases for old names and leave them as deprecated? > >>D2 has already taken the steps necessary to support both Phobos and Tango. > >But D2 is not nearly ready for production use. D1 is almost there... Is > >missing so little that it's frustrating. > > I don't believe that contract inheritance is the key to production use. > There shouldn't be anything standing in the way of using D1 for > production use, and in fact it is being used that way. Honestly I'm not confident enough in D1 for production use if it's incomplete and if the Tango/Druntime runtime is not merged because 2 codebases should be maintained and you can't use the few libraries available for one runtime with the other (without using some hackish wrappers). Lack of support in mainstream tools is the other thing preventing me to use D at work. I *can't* use D for something serious (sadly, because I'd love to). > >In case you are not following the thread about interior pointers, here is > >another drawback for the Tango vs. Phobos problem, here is copy&pasted > >fragment: > > I think it would be great to have a centralized place where to put this > > improvements. This is another situation where I think Tango vs. Phobos > > issue is killing D. When I started my work in the thesis I had to decide > > whether to work with Phobos or Tango. I finally decided for Tango, because > > is the only option for LDC and because is way better organized (and more > > receptive to patches). But I hate knowing that my work will be available > > (in the best case) only for people using Tango. > > I don't believe that splitting D into yet another separate version can > fix this, as then the user has to decide which D to use. Use the latest stable version, as you do with any serious language =) You shouldn't introduce breaking changes too often. I think a language version bump every (half) year is very acceptable. I mean, just see how Python/Ruby/PHP/Java/Haskel/ development model works, all very evolving languages that don't break backwards compatibility very often and with a lot of well maintained programs and libraries. But this is getting repetitive, so I guess it has no point to keep discussing it. Once in a while I have the crazy idea that you can be convinced otherwise (hey! You finally got convinced to fork D2 from D1! =)... Maybe I'll try again in a few months... -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) Si ella es el sol, yo soy la luna Si ella es el mar, soy el desierto Y estamos en eclipse total Y estamos en eclipse total
Re: What's the current state of D?
Brad Roberts, el 10 de mayo a las 16:08 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > > > I reported the bug because I think that could be the case. If is not, it's > > a Gold bug and it should be reported. If it is, it should be fixed in DMD. > > I don't have the knowlegde to check that myself, and that's why I reported > > the bug to both tools. > > > >> In other words, it's not at all surprising to me that the bug report > >> hasn't received a lot of attention yet. > > > > So you are saying you have to be a compiler hacker to report a bug? Great, > > that make sense! > > You seem to have missed my point. The point was, the more detailed the > report, > the clearer the steps to reproduce, the more obvious it is that the compiler > is > what's broken.. all of these things increase the likelihood of a bug report > having a higher priority. > > The incoming rate is higher than the fix rate (as evidenced by the number of > open bugs) and so something has to give. All I was doing was illustrating > some > reasons that might have contributed to that specific report not having been > fixed yet. > > Do I encourage filing bugs without the level of detail I suggest help get bugs > fixed fast? Absolutely. An un-filed bug is an un-fixed bug. > > Take these points as ways to help make sure your important issues can be > addressed quickly and easily. I totally agree, but you put my bug report as an example of a bad bug report. I don't think it is a bad bug report, so please let me know if you think I can improve it without being a compiler hacker. -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) He used to do surgery On girls in the eighties But gravity always wins
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: > Brad Roberts, el 10 de mayo a las 10:12 me escribiste: >> Leandro Lucarella wrote: >> >>> How many people is using that? How bad would it be to call the next >>> version of DMD that include the Tango/Druntime runtime D 1.100 or >>> something (is really hard to pick right version numbers under the version >>> scheme you use[*]) to make clear there is compatibility break in that >>> version? >>> >>> [*] I really wonder how would you call D2 when it's stable. You will just >>> say D 2.134 is D2 final/stable? I think this is another problem with >>> D, version naming is really confusing and lame. You can't know >>> anything from a D version number. And DMD compiler and D specs are too >>> much coupled. It would be nice to have separate version numbers if you >>> really want to encourage some kind of D standard and compiler vendors >>> to start making D compilers. >> For what it's worth, there's at least one other major product that follows a >> similar versioning scheme.. mysql. > > At least MySQL uses major, minor, and patchlevel version numbering scheme > ;) > Mysql uses an x.y.z numbering scheme. DMD uses a y.z numbering scheme. With mysql's x.y being equavilent to dmd's y. The use of z in both is the same. Given that mysql's increase of its x.y component being somewhat arbitrary, it might as well just be one number. Either way, the transition of the z component through various stages from alpha to release being at arbitrary points along the number line, my point still stands. :) Later, Brad
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: > I reported the bug because I think that could be the case. If is not, it's > a Gold bug and it should be reported. If it is, it should be fixed in DMD. > I don't have the knowlegde to check that myself, and that's why I reported > the bug to both tools. > >> In other words, it's not at all surprising to me that the bug report >> hasn't received a lot of attention yet. > > So you are saying you have to be a compiler hacker to report a bug? Great, > that make sense! You seem to have missed my point. The point was, the more detailed the report, the clearer the steps to reproduce, the more obvious it is that the compiler is what's broken.. all of these things increase the likelihood of a bug report having a higher priority. The incoming rate is higher than the fix rate (as evidenced by the number of open bugs) and so something has to give. All I was doing was illustrating some reasons that might have contributed to that specific report not having been fixed yet. Do I encourage filing bugs without the level of detail I suggest help get bugs fixed fast? Absolutely. An un-filed bug is an un-fixed bug. Take these points as ways to help make sure your important issues can be addressed quickly and easily. Later, Brad
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: There was a thread in the NG asking for possible copyright issues to include the GDB patch upstream, and it had no answer for example. I don't think you *have* to answer that mail, but I think helping this kind of things happening instead of ignoring them is good for D promotion too =) Can you point me to that thread? There are an awful lot of posts, and I miss things. I posted it in this very same thread, just before the link to the GDB patches link. Here it is again: http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Getting_D_language_patch_into_GDB_82597.html If someone has a patch ready to submit to GDB, and needs some licensing change for it, I'm happy to provide that.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: Walter Bright, el 10 de mayo a las 11:21 me escribiste: I posted it in this very same thread, just before the link to the GDB patches link. Here it is again: http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Getting_D_language_patch_into_GDB_82597.html Thank you. Given all the beating of breasts and rending of robes about D1 not being stable and breaking code even when a bug is fixed in it, I just can't see coming out with a new D1 that substantially breaks every existing D1 code base. It would break all existing D1 code base? I suspect it would break pretty much all the non-trivial code. If the compiler were really open source, and the frontend were in a public repository, and fixes would be well separated patches, you wouldn't have to maintain 3 D version. It's not just me, it's the poor sap who has to maintain 3 different versions of his library. D2 has already taken the steps necessary to support both Phobos and Tango. But D2 is not nearly ready for production use. D1 is almost there... Is missing so little that it's frustrating. I don't believe that contract inheritance is the key to production use. There shouldn't be anything standing in the way of using D1 for production use, and in fact it is being used that way. In case you are not following the thread about interior pointers, here is another drawback for the Tango vs. Phobos problem, here is copy&pasted fragment: I think it would be great to have a centralized place where to put this improvements. This is another situation where I think Tango vs. Phobos issue is killing D. When I started my work in the thesis I had to decide whether to work with Phobos or Tango. I finally decided for Tango, because is the only option for LDC and because is way better organized (and more receptive to patches). But I hate knowing that my work will be available (in the best case) only for people using Tango. I don't believe that splitting D into yet another separate version can fix this, as then the user has to decide which D to use.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright, el 10 de mayo a las 11:21 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >Walter Bright, el 9 de mayo a las 22:05 me escribiste: > >>Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >>>Official? I don't see any official support for D in GDB. I can only find > >>>this patches: > >>>http://www.dsource.org/projects/gdb-patches/ > >>Dwarf has an official value for the language, DW_LANG_D = 0x13. > >I'm talking about GDB. GDB has no official D support. > > GDB officially supports Dwarf, and Dwarf officially has a D identifier. While > gdb may not go any further than that, it's a start. > > >There was a thread > >in the NG asking for possible copyright issues to include the GDB patch > >upstream, and it had no answer for example. I don't think you *have* to > >answer that mail, but I think helping this kind of things happening > >instead of ignoring them is good for D promotion too =) > > Can you point me to that thread? There are an awful lot of posts, and I miss > things. I posted it in this very same thread, just before the link to the GDB patches link. Here it is again: http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Getting_D_language_patch_into_GDB_82597.html > >>>How is that? Most runtime code is not used by the user directly. And for > >>>this item I think not merging it does more damage than introducing > >>>a breaking change (is much better to introduce a breaking change to solve > >>>this problem than to add a predefined Posix version ;). > >>Tango chose to use a number of incompatible names and a fundamentally > >>different class hierarchy for the same thing(s). > >How many people is using that? How bad would it be to call the next > >version of DMD that include the Tango/Druntime runtime D 1.100 or > >something (is really hard to pick right version numbers under the version > >scheme you use[*]) to make clear there is compatibility break in that > >version? > > Given all the beating of breasts and rending of robes about D1 not being > stable and breaking code even when a bug is fixed in it, I just can't > see coming out with a new D1 that substantially breaks every existing D1 > code base. It would break all existing D1 code base? > >Seriously, there were several (silly) compatibility breaks since 1.0 was > >out, I think is a huge issue that deserves it... > > This is what I mean when I say that it's simply impossible to ask for > breaking changes for D1 while pillorying D1 for breaking changes. I also > believe it is impractical to divide D1 into two incompatible versions > - then there'd be 3 D versions to simultaneously support. If the compiler were really open source, and the frontend were in a public repository, and fixes would be well separated patches, you wouldn't have to maintain 3 D version. You probably even have to maintain 2 D versions. Other people could take over and apply fixes to the stable D branches while you with D2. The problem is doing that right now is really hard, because to see what changed in the DMDFE from one version to another you have to download 2 complete compiler version, make a diff yourself and you end up with a big diff that you can't possible break in small chunks with individual bugfixes. > D2 has already taken the steps necessary to support both Phobos and Tango. But D2 is not nearly ready for production use. D1 is almost there... Is missing so little that it's frustrating. In case you are not following the thread about interior pointers, here is another drawback for the Tango vs. Phobos problem, here is copy&pasted fragment: I think it would be great to have a centralized place where to put this improvements. This is another situation where I think Tango vs. Phobos issue is killing D. When I started my work in the thesis I had to decide whether to work with Phobos or Tango. I finally decided for Tango, because is the only option for LDC and because is way better organized (and more receptive to patches). But I hate knowing that my work will be available (in the best case) only for people using Tango. -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) De tan fina la condesa, por no cagarse, reza. -- Ricardo Vaporeso
Re: What's the current state of D?
Brad Roberts, el 10 de mayo a las 10:12 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > > > How many people is using that? How bad would it be to call the next > > version of DMD that include the Tango/Druntime runtime D 1.100 or > > something (is really hard to pick right version numbers under the version > > scheme you use[*]) to make clear there is compatibility break in that > > version? > > > > [*] I really wonder how would you call D2 when it's stable. You will just > > say D 2.134 is D2 final/stable? I think this is another problem with > > D, version naming is really confusing and lame. You can't know > > anything from a D version number. And DMD compiler and D specs are too > > much coupled. It would be nice to have separate version numbers if you > > really want to encourage some kind of D standard and compiler vendors > > to start making D compilers. > > For what it's worth, there's at least one other major product that follows a > similar versioning scheme.. mysql. At least MySQL uses major, minor, and patchlevel version numbering scheme ;) -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) The biggest lie you can tell yourself is When I get what I want I will be happy
Re: What's the current state of D?
Tomas Lindquist Olsen wrote: > On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 12:05 AM, mpt wrote: >> I keep making 2 mistakes in my D programs, and fixing them feels >> troublesome. >> >> 1. Null references. I get a segfault and gdb is useless (ldc thing maybe). > > Useless how? Generally LDC debug info should be decent. If not, we'd > be glad to look into why that is! I had a problem in the past where gdb would only output a bunch of ???'s like it does for stripped or optimized executables. This seems no longer to be the case. I stand corrected.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: Walter Bright, el 9 de mayo a las 22:05 me escribiste: Leandro Lucarella wrote: Official? I don't see any official support for D in GDB. I can only find this patches: http://www.dsource.org/projects/gdb-patches/ Dwarf has an official value for the language, DW_LANG_D = 0x13. I'm talking about GDB. GDB has no official D support. GDB officially supports Dwarf, and Dwarf officially has a D identifier. While gdb may not go any further than that, it's a start. There was a thread in the NG asking for possible copyright issues to include the GDB patch upstream, and it had no answer for example. I don't think you *have* to answer that mail, but I think helping this kind of things happening instead of ignoring them is good for D promotion too =) Can you point me to that thread? There are an awful lot of posts, and I miss things. How is that? Most runtime code is not used by the user directly. And for this item I think not merging it does more damage than introducing a breaking change (is much better to introduce a breaking change to solve this problem than to add a predefined Posix version ;). Tango chose to use a number of incompatible names and a fundamentally different class hierarchy for the same thing(s). How many people is using that? How bad would it be to call the next version of DMD that include the Tango/Druntime runtime D 1.100 or something (is really hard to pick right version numbers under the version scheme you use[*]) to make clear there is compatibility break in that version? Given all the beating of breasts and rending of robes about D1 not being stable and breaking code even when a bug is fixed in it, I just can't see coming out with a new D1 that substantially breaks every existing D1 code base. Seriously, there were several (silly) compatibility breaks since 1.0 was out, I think is a huge issue that deserves it... This is what I mean when I say that it's simply impossible to ask for breaking changes for D1 while pillorying D1 for breaking changes. I also believe it is impractical to divide D1 into two incompatible versions - then there'd be 3 D versions to simultaneously support. D2 has already taken the steps necessary to support both Phobos and Tango.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Brad Roberts, el 9 de mayo a las 21:42 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > > Brad Roberts, el 9 de mayo a las 12:31 me escribiste: > >> If there's things that need to change in what the compiler emits, Walter > >> has > >> shown himself to be willing to rapidly change them where the required > >> changes > >> are clearly described in terms of both 'what' and 'why'. In other words, > >> "it's > >> broken" isn't sufficient but "if the frobble was changed to frobnosticator > >> for > >> each wobble, it would work" results in the next release having that change > >> made. > > > > BTW, here is something that should be fixed in the compiler to improve GNU > > binutils support =) > > http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2932 > > > > A great illustration of a less than ideal bug report. "A tool breaks in some > way, fix the compiler." It's entirely possible that dmd is producing the > wrong > thing, but there's an definite lack of specificity about what's wrong on the > compiler side. Those errors are coming out of the linker. It's not even > particularly clear that the bug is with dmd and not the new linker (one that's > not shipped as the default linker on any distribution yet, unless I've lost > track again). No, it's not (it's shipped but not as the default linker), because they are making sure that it works well with other tools. Usually when you use a tool that is a de facto standard and have some bug, people start relying in that bug as a feature. I know I had some linking bugs because of this, and I spotted them thanks to Gold. I'm not saying that Gold is perfect, but since it's a complete rewrite there are some bugs fixed (or things where is more strict than the old GNU ld) that should be adjusted to work well with the new linker. I reported the bug because I think that could be the case. If is not, it's a Gold bug and it should be reported. If it is, it should be fixed in DMD. I don't have the knowlegde to check that myself, and that's why I reported the bug to both tools. > In other words, it's not at all surprising to me that the bug report > hasn't received a lot of attention yet. So you are saying you have to be a compiler hacker to report a bug? Great, that make sense! I think the error message is pretty clear (the ELF header size is supposed to be wrong). I think somebody that know the compiler can check if this bug report is right or if it's a bug in GNU Gold in a couple of minutes (maybe seconds). And BTW GDC and LDC works just fine. I guess you can argue that GDC uses the GCC backend which can be tightly coupled with GNU binutils being both a GNU product, but LDC is not. So the bug report has a high probability to be right, I wasn't saw the error message and run to the D bugzilla to report the bug, I tested other tools first, and from my own experience with Gold, when it said there was an error and I thought the error was in Gold, I was wrong and Gold was right (because what I said before, I was relying on some bugs in the old GNU ld), so I have some degree of confidence in that Gold is not a piece of crap full of bugs. And you may take a look to the GNU Gold linker bug report: http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=10126 It is having attention. That's why GNU tools are widely used and D isn't. This kind of things make very sad... -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) VECINOS RESCATARON A CABALLITO ATROPELLADO -- Crónica TV
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: > How many people is using that? How bad would it be to call the next > version of DMD that include the Tango/Druntime runtime D 1.100 or > something (is really hard to pick right version numbers under the version > scheme you use[*]) to make clear there is compatibility break in that > version? > > [*] I really wonder how would you call D2 when it's stable. You will just > say D 2.134 is D2 final/stable? I think this is another problem with > D, version naming is really confusing and lame. You can't know > anything from a D version number. And DMD compiler and D specs are too > much coupled. It would be nice to have separate version numbers if you > really want to encourage some kind of D standard and compiler vendors > to start making D compilers. For what it's worth, there's at least one other major product that follows a similar versioning scheme.. mysql. Later, Brad
Re: What's the current state of D?
It seems I didn't explain myself very clearly. Daniel Keep wrote: >> The point of non-nullables would be to detect improper usage at >> compile-time, right? Then I don't believe this problem has an elegant >> solution until compilers can do a rigorous control-flow analysis. >> Specifying default pointer values other than null doesn't seem very nice. > > You don't need control-flow analysis. You just need a type system which > supports nullables like D2's supports const. You need control-flow analysis to know at compile-time if: * an uninitialized value is read, or * a null pointer is dereferenced. >> Nonetheless, a good step forward would be to recognize the distinction >> between `null' and `uninitialized'. Reading a variable that's >> uninitialized is an error. Reading a null pointer is fine, but >> dereferencing it is an error. > > Uninitialised variables is only a symptom. The larger issue is that it > doesn't make sense for most functions to accept null object arguments. > It's quite rare, at least in my code, to have a function that can do > anything sensible with "nothing" other than HCF [1]. I understand the issue. In my idea, there are non-nullable pointers. In fact, they would probably be the default kind of pointer. But Christopher explained those kinds of pointers have their own problems. How to initialize an array of non-nullables? Or a struct? So formally introduce the notion of `uninitialized' variables, or in particular, pointers. No need to initialize (even non-nullables) right away. Just initialize anytime. I believe in D you specify this with =void. But don't you see, you've replaced your null-dereference problem with a uninitialized-reading problem. That's basically the same deal. > We already have a runtime check, and > it's not good enough. The major issue is that it notifies us of a > problem at a time when we generally do not have any useful information > on how to solve it. Exactly. This brings me back to the need for rigorous control-flow analysis. Without it, you can't get your info at compile-time in the general case. -- Michiel Helvensteijn
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright, el 9 de mayo a las 22:05 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >Official? I don't see any official support for D in GDB. I can only find > >this patches: > >http://www.dsource.org/projects/gdb-patches/ > > Dwarf has an official value for the language, DW_LANG_D = 0x13. I'm talking about GDB. GDB has no official D support. There was a thread in the NG asking for possible copyright issues to include the GDB patch upstream, and it had no answer for example. I don't think you *have* to answer that mail, but I think helping this kind of things happening instead of ignoring them is good for D promotion too =) > >How is that? Most runtime code is not used by the user directly. And for > >this item I think not merging it does more damage than introducing > >a breaking change (is much better to introduce a breaking change to solve > >this problem than to add a predefined Posix version ;). > > Tango chose to use a number of incompatible names and a fundamentally > different class hierarchy for the same thing(s). How many people is using that? How bad would it be to call the next version of DMD that include the Tango/Druntime runtime D 1.100 or something (is really hard to pick right version numbers under the version scheme you use[*]) to make clear there is compatibility break in that version? Seriously, there were several (silly) compatibility breaks since 1.0 was out, I think is a huge issue that deserves it... [*] I really wonder how would you call D2 when it's stable. You will just say D 2.134 is D2 final/stable? I think this is another problem with D, version naming is really confusing and lame. You can't know anything from a D version number. And DMD compiler and D specs are too much coupled. It would be nice to have separate version numbers if you really want to encourage some kind of D standard and compiler vendors to start making D compilers. -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) MATAN AL PERRO: DICEN QUE ESTABA POSEIDO POR EL DEMONIO... -- Crónica TV
Re: What's the current state of D?
Michiel Helvensteijn wrote: > ... > > The point of non-nullables would be to detect improper usage at > compile-time, right? Then I don't believe this problem has an elegant > solution until compilers can do a rigorous control-flow analysis. > Specifying default pointer values other than null doesn't seem very nice. You don't need control-flow analysis. You just need a type system which supports nullables like D2's supports const. > Nonetheless, a good step forward would be to recognize the distinction > between `null' and `uninitialized'. Reading a variable that's uninitialized > is an error. Reading a null pointer is fine, but dereferencing it is an > error. Uninitialised variables is only a symptom. The larger issue is that it doesn't make sense for most functions to accept null object arguments. It's quite rare, at least in my code, to have a function that can do anything sensible with "nothing" other than HCF [1]. > This effectively solves your non-nullable problems, but you'd basically be > replacing them with another problem. No, it doesn't. > ... > > So effectively, what's the difference between that and the original null > reference problem? You'd basically get the runtime error when you read the > pointer, but before you dereference it. > > Until compilers are smart enough. The whole point of having non-nullable types is so that you can't even STORE a null in the first place. We already have a runtime check, and it's not good enough. The major issue is that it notifies us of a problem at a time when we generally do not have any useful information on how to solve it. The problem isn't dereferencing nulls. It's when they get STORED that's the problem. -- Daniel [1] HCF - Halt and Catch Fire; old instruction on the PDP machines. :P
Re: What's the current state of D?
Christopher Wright wrote: >> About the null references, most people seem to agree that the right way >> to fix that is with some sort of "non-nullable". But there's a lot of >> disagreement on exactly how non-nullables should work. > > And whether they *can* work. D2 has struct constructors, so structs can > have non-nullable fields, but you can't have an array of non-nullable > elements (you can set the length, and suddenly your non-nullable-element > array has a bunch of nulls in it). Similarly, no arrays of structs > containing non-nullable types, etc. The point of non-nullables would be to detect improper usage at compile-time, right? Then I don't believe this problem has an elegant solution until compilers can do a rigorous control-flow analysis. Specifying default pointer values other than null doesn't seem very nice. Nonetheless, a good step forward would be to recognize the distinction between `null' and `uninitialized'. Reading a variable that's uninitialized is an error. Reading a null pointer is fine, but dereferencing it is an error. This effectively solves your non-nullable problems, but you'd basically be replacing them with another problem. In general, you can only know if a variable is initialized at run-time. And then only if you reserve memory for the `uninitialized' state. So effectively, what's the difference between that and the original null reference problem? You'd basically get the runtime error when you read the pointer, but before you dereference it. Until compilers are smart enough. -- Michiel Helvensteijn
Re: What's the current state of D?
Nick Sabalausky wrote: About the null references, most people seem to agree that the right way to fix that is with some sort of "non-nullable". But there's a lot of disagreement on exactly how non-nullables should work. And whether they *can* work. D2 has struct constructors, so structs can have non-nullable fields, but you can't have an array of non-nullable elements (you can set the length, and suddenly your non-nullable-element array has a bunch of nulls in it). Similarly, no arrays of structs containing non-nullable types, etc. There are a lot of things to look into with non-nullables, and Walter doesn't have the time.
Re: What's the current state of D?
torhu wrote: On 10.05.2009 00:05, mpt wrote: I keep making 2 mistakes in my D programs, and fixing them feels troublesome. 1. Null references. I get a segfault and gdb is useless (ldc thing maybe). 2. Exceptions. It prints the msg nicely, but it's unhelpful in tracing the real cause of error. Shouldn't there be an automatic null check for references and stack traces? Sometimes I think I'm using the wrong tool as others have solutions for these. Tango trunk has stacktrace functionality for both Windows and linux I think. There's also a Phobos backtrace patch. Though the Linux one just prints out the addresses and not the line numbers. Licensing issues with linking to libbfd to extract that information.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: Official? I don't see any official support for D in GDB. I can only find this patches: http://www.dsource.org/projects/gdb-patches/ Dwarf has an official value for the language, DW_LANG_D = 0x13. How is that? Most runtime code is not used by the user directly. And for this item I think not merging it does more damage than introducing a breaking change (is much better to introduce a breaking change to solve this problem than to add a predefined Posix version ;). Tango chose to use a number of incompatible names and a fundamentally different class hierarchy for the same thing(s).
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: > Brad Roberts, el 9 de mayo a las 12:31 me escribiste: >> If there's things that need to change in what the compiler emits, Walter has >> shown himself to be willing to rapidly change them where the required changes >> are clearly described in terms of both 'what' and 'why'. In other words, >> "it's >> broken" isn't sufficient but "if the frobble was changed to frobnosticator >> for >> each wobble, it would work" results in the next release having that change >> made. > > BTW, here is something that should be fixed in the compiler to improve GNU > binutils support =) > http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2932 > A great illustration of a less than ideal bug report. "A tool breaks in some way, fix the compiler." It's entirely possible that dmd is producing the wrong thing, but there's an definite lack of specificity about what's wrong on the compiler side. Those errors are coming out of the linker. It's not even particularly clear that the bug is with dmd and not the new linker (one that's not shipped as the default linker on any distribution yet, unless I've lost track again). In other words, it's not at all surprising to me that the bug report hasn't received a lot of attention yet. Prioritization is a difficult exercise, and there's no way everyone will ever be happy. Later, Brad
Re: What's the current state of D?
Brad Roberts, el 9 de mayo a las 12:31 me escribiste: > If there's things that need to change in what the compiler emits, Walter has > shown himself to be willing to rapidly change them where the required changes > are clearly described in terms of both 'what' and 'why'. In other words, > "it's > broken" isn't sufficient but "if the frobble was changed to frobnosticator for > each wobble, it would work" results in the next release having that change > made. BTW, here is something that should be fixed in the compiler to improve GNU binutils support =) http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2932 -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) Un paracaidista, que no deja de caer. Lo que me lleva hacia arriba, es lo que me tira hacia abajo.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Brad Roberts, el 9 de mayo a las 12:31 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > > > > Another very *BIG* issue is lack of mainstream tools support. > > > > C++98 was finished before starting C++0x. A lot of effort was made to make > > mainstream tools to support C++. Most tools demangle C++ names (even when > > they aren't standard!). At least GDB should be able to do that, and > > Valgrind and GNU binutils, if you want people to be comfortable working > > with D. There are patches here and there but nothing works out of the box. > > A critical error that keeps being made.. in MOST compiled languages, the > authors > of the compilers are not the ones that are producing the eco-systems above > them. > Even for the VM based languages, the language/compiler/runtime authors rarely > venture much above those. Eclipse isn't a sun invention, nor are any of the > other development environments. Microsoft is about the only one that produces > an large tool chain, but the groups that do the various parts are different. > The compiler team doesn't produce (or in many cases even use) Visual Studio. > > Etc.. I know that, but the "language" should push forward in that direction. I don't know why this happen with D, what can be made to improve the situation, but I think putting all the attention in D2 doesn't help, and doesn't encourage people to work on D1. I've decided to work in D1 GC instead of D2 partially because of this. I think D1 is a great language, very *very* close to be complete. It's a shame to through that because D2 is cooler. For example, I can't use D for work. I can't convince my bosses to use D when you have to compile your own toolchain to get a debugger that works with it. C++ sucks, but I'm stucked with that as long as it has better tools support than D. And I think this is where D1 can start taking off, when it's ready for busyness, because unfortunatelly is really hard to produce things for D just as a hobby. And why this only happen to D? Really, don't you even ask yourselves? I think there is a "social" problem with D, or a "leadership" problem. I think people is not encouraged to work on D1. > So, want the tool chain to mature.. go to work. Work with the GDB community > to > build and incorporate changes. The same with all the things you want to see > changed or created. Unfortunatelly I'm putting my work in the GC now. I was so annoyed a weak ago about not being able to use gdb, valgrind or nm with D that I downloaded valgrind to see how hard it would be to add D support to it, but I had to desist because I don't have the time right now. > > I think what D1 is *really* missing is that 2 things: completeness and > > tools support. Without that is really hard to take it seriously. > > > > I think the D team should be working more in that direction before > > finishing D2. I know is very boring comparing it to making D2, but I think > > that is what is transmitted from D maintainers: "D1 is boring, don't pay > > attention to it, D2 is fun, let's play with that!". And this is what > > happening. People are playing with D2 and forgetting to finish D1. > > If you've gotten the impression that "d1 is boring" is the message from > whatever > this "the d team" (team suggests many people, but there's really just a tiny > few > involved -- this isn't microsoft or sun with hundreds of worker ants) is, then > you're impression is off. The message is "d1 is only receiving bug fixes -- > and > only those with the right balance of risk/reward". When I say "D team" I mean Walter, Andrei and Bartoz mostly, maybe Don and Seam too =) The impression is what it is. It can't be off. If something gives an impression it doesn't matter if you don't want to make that impression, that's the point (I know this maybe has no sense as it is written, english is not my first language and I don't know how to explain it better). And I think ignoring that that impression is made, when every month (or weak!) there is a thread about it, is dumb. -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) Es mas posible, que un elefante maneje un cero km a que un camello habite un departamento de un ambiente. -- Peperino Pómoro
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright, el 9 de mayo a las 11:23 me escribiste: > Leandro Lucarella wrote: > >D1 is INCOMPLETE (for example pre/post conditions inheritance are > >missing). I tend to forget which features are there for real what aren't > >(there are a few, true, but still). > > Array ops weren't there for a long time, many argued that D1 wasn't complete > without them, and a few months ago I added them in. > > As far as I can tell, nobody cared about array ops. > > In C++ land, only one compiler actually completely implements C++98, and > this is after more than 10 years. (Exported templates and template name > lookup rules remain unimplemented by major compilers.) (P.S. Digital > Mars C++ does the correct name lookup rules!) The fact is, nobody > actually cares about those incomplete features. Nobody uses exported > templates, even if they are using a compiler that supports it. > > So that leaves contract inheritance. I find it hard to see how not > having it is a showstopper for using D1. Contracts in D haven't been the > big win I thought they might be at first. They aren't use much at all. > There are a lot of other issues that do make a big difference, and those > are the issues that get attention. Exported templates was unpractical and unimplementable AFAIK (but I guess you know that better than me). And C++ is an ISO standard language. D is not. If something is unpractical and unimplementable in D (I don't think is the case of contract inheritance) why didn't you removed a long time ago when you decided that it wasn't useful? And maybe you are right, but the bottom line is how D is perceived. People usually don't go through the C++98 standard to learn C++, but it goes through the D specs to learn D. Nobody talks about exported templates in C++ because they don't exist in reality, but the D specs talks about features that are missing in what is supposed to be a finished version. And that makes D looks bad. > >Another very *BIG* issue is lack of mainstream tools support. > >C++98 was finished before starting C++0x. A lot of effort was made to make > >mainstream tools to support C++. Most tools demangle C++ names (even when > >they aren't standard!). At least GDB should be able to do that, and > >Valgrind and GNU binutils, if you want people to be comfortable working > >with D. There are patches here and there but nothing works out of the box. > > GDB does have an official D mode. There are demanglers for > D identifiers. Can you submit patches for GDB to the official source > tree? Official? I don't see any official support for D in GDB. I can only find this patches: http://www.dsource.org/projects/gdb-patches/ And this thread about integrating the patches in GDB: http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Getting_D_language_patch_into_GDB_82597.html But I can't see any mention in the official GDB documentation and certainly it doesn't automatically recognize D programs as such. > >I think what D1 is *really* missing is that 2 things: completeness and > >tools support. Without that is really hard to take it seriously. > >I think the D team should be working more in that direction before > >finishing D2. I know is very boring comparing it to making D2, but I think > >that is what is transmitted from D maintainers: "D1 is boring, don't pay > >attention to it, D2 is fun, let's play with that!". And this is what > >happening. People are playing with D2 and forgetting to finish D1. > > It isn't about boring. It's about allocating our very limited resources > for maximum effect. If I thought that contract inheritance was > a showstopper for D1, it'd move way up on the priority list. But I have > a hard time believing it is a showstopper, like array ops turned out to > not be. I don't think it's a *showtopper*. I'm trying to explain one of the reasons I think D is perceived as a toy/incomplete/not-ready-for-business language. But I certainly think D 1.0 should be finished before 2.0 though =) > Most of the work I do on dmd is bug fixes, and nearly all of those wind > up in D1 as well. It's just not true that D1 is being overlooked or > ignored, and the D1 changelog should amply illustrate that. > > http://www.digitalmars.com/d/1.0/changelog.html I know that. Everybody knows that. And I don't think anybody is arguing that. Lack of bug-fixing is not a mentioned problem AFAIK. > >The Tango vs. Phobos is still a *BIG* issue for D1. I think don't > >addressing that is a huge error. It's only hurting D1 and preventing its > >adoption. > > Doing a merge would be a very breaking change. D2's support for Tango is > probably the biggest breaking change in moving D1 code to D2. How is that? Most runtime code is not used by the user directly. And for this item I think not merging it does more damage than introducing a breaking change (is much better to introduce a breaking change to solve this problem than to add a predefined Posix version ;). -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http:/
Re: What's the current state of D?
On 10.05.2009 00:05, mpt wrote: I keep making 2 mistakes in my D programs, and fixing them feels troublesome. 1. Null references. I get a segfault and gdb is useless (ldc thing maybe). 2. Exceptions. It prints the msg nicely, but it's unhelpful in tracing the real cause of error. Shouldn't there be an automatic null check for references and stack traces? Sometimes I think I'm using the wrong tool as others have solutions for these. Tango trunk has stacktrace functionality for both Windows and linux I think. There's also a Phobos backtrace patch.
Re: What's the current state of D?
On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 12:05 AM, mpt wrote: > I keep making 2 mistakes in my D programs, and fixing them feels > troublesome. > > 1. Null references. I get a segfault and gdb is useless (ldc thing maybe). Useless how? Generally LDC debug info should be decent. If not, we'd be glad to look into why that is! > 2. Exceptions. It prints the msg nicely, but it's unhelpful in tracing > the real cause of error. > > Shouldn't there be an automatic null check for references and stack > traces? Sometimes I think I'm using the wrong tool as others have > solutions for these. >
Re: What's the current state of D?
"Nick Sabalausky" wrote in message news:gu51vu$1e2...@digitalmars.com... > "mpt" wrote in message > news:gu4unq$16e...@digitalmars.com... >>I keep making 2 mistakes in my D programs, and fixing them feels >> troublesome. >> >> 1. Null references. I get a segfault and gdb is useless (ldc thing >> maybe). >> 2. Exceptions. It prints the msg nicely, but it's unhelpful in tracing >> the real cause of error. >> >> Shouldn't there be an automatic null check for references and stack >> traces? Sometimes I think I'm using the wrong tool as others have >> solutions for these. > > These are two very common complaints, and there has been a lot of > disussion about both. Hopefully they'll get taken care of. > To elaborate: Pretty much everyone agrees we need stack traces on exceptions. I'm actually kind of surprised DMD still doesn't have them, I wouldn't think it would be a real major change (at least compared to some other things). IIRC, I think the Linux LDC already has this feature. About the null references, most people seem to agree that the right way to fix that is with some sort of "non-nullable". But there's a lot of disagreement on exactly how non-nullables should work.
Re: What's the current state of D?
"mpt" wrote in message news:gu4unq$16e...@digitalmars.com... >I keep making 2 mistakes in my D programs, and fixing them feels > troublesome. > > 1. Null references. I get a segfault and gdb is useless (ldc thing maybe). > 2. Exceptions. It prints the msg nicely, but it's unhelpful in tracing > the real cause of error. > > Shouldn't there be an automatic null check for references and stack > traces? Sometimes I think I'm using the wrong tool as others have > solutions for these. These are two very common complaints, and there has been a lot of disussion about both. Hopefully they'll get taken care of.
Re: What's the current state of D?
I keep making 2 mistakes in my D programs, and fixing them feels troublesome. 1. Null references. I get a segfault and gdb is useless (ldc thing maybe). 2. Exceptions. It prints the msg nicely, but it's unhelpful in tracing the real cause of error. Shouldn't there be an automatic null check for references and stack traces? Sometimes I think I'm using the wrong tool as others have solutions for these.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Brad Roberts Wrote: > Steve Teale wrote: > > D is great. How do we spread that particular perception? > > Use it. Tell people you're using it. Produce tools, libraries, applications, > whatever.. that are interesting enough that people want to know more. > > Later, > Brad I second this. A great language and compiler is often not enough to get a lot of people interested. Since a parent post mentioned Pascal, look at the Lazarus installer you can download for Windows for example. I've already seen a couple of posts in the Netbeans users forum asking for a D plugin, and there is one already for Eclipse. People _is_ interested in being more productive and enjoying its work. But developers nowadays take some things for granted, besides the compiler. But there are simpler things that could help a lot, IMHO. For example, recent news in the front page, updated regularly. It doesn't need to be big anouncements, minor revisions or community news are ok, just enough to let people know this is moving. A small roadmap of completed features, showing reached milestones and future milestones. You don't need to show expected release date for future milestones, but it's nice to show approximate date of completion of already reached milestones. This also helps to give a perception of progress. This two should be in the front page or, if not possible, at least in a clearly visible link near the top of front page. HTH, cheers, Daniel
Re: What's the current state of D?
Brad Roberts Wrote: > Steve Teale wrote: > > D is great. How do we spread that particular perception? > > Use it. Tell people you're using it. Produce tools, libraries, applications, > whatever.. that are interesting enough that people want to know more. > > Later, > Brad I second this. A great language and compiler is often not enough to get a lot of people interested. Since a parent post mentioned Pascal, look at the Lazarus installer you can download for Windows for example. I've already seen a couple of posts in the Netbeans users forum asking for a D plugin, and there is one already for Eclipse. People _is_ interested in being more productive and enjoying its work. But developers nowadays take some things for granted, besides the compiler. But there are simpler things that could help a lot, IMHO. For example, recent news in the front page, updated regularly. It doesn't need to be big anouncements, minor revisions or community news are ok, just enough to let people know this is moving. A small roadmap of completed features, showing reached milestones and future milestones. You don't need to show expected release date for future milestones, but it's nice to show approximate date of completion of already reached milestones. This also helps to give a perception of progress. This two should be in the front page or, if not possible, at least in a clearly visible link near the top of front page. HTH, cheers, Daniel
Re: What's the current state of D?
Brad Roberts wrote: Steve Teale wrote: D is great. How do we spread that particular perception? Use it. Tell people you're using it. Produce tools, libraries, applications, whatever.. that are interesting enough that people want to know more. Also write about it. Of all programming languages of comparable breadth, D is probably the one that made it with the least (amazingly little) written material. Andrei
Re: What's the current state of D?
Steve Teale wrote: D is great. How do we spread that particular perception? All these are free and effective: Write articles/blogs about your experiences using D. Submit patches for better D support for gnu tools like gdb. Give a presentation on D at your local programmers' club meeting. Submit presentation abstracts on D to conferences. Read programming articles and if they don't mention D, but should, email the author and point it out. Make relevant comments about D on programming threads on Reddit, Slashdot, Gamedev.net, stackoverflow, ycombinator, etc. Promote open source D applications that you or others have written. Email tool vendors and ask for D support. Email web sites that have categories for programming languages that don't include D, and ask for a D category. Improve Wikipedia pages that mention D. Add mention of D to Wikipedia pages that should mention it.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Steve Teale wrote: > D is great. How do we spread that particular perception? Use it. Tell people you're using it. Produce tools, libraries, applications, whatever.. that are interesting enough that people want to know more. Later, Brad
Re: What's the current state of D?
Georg Wrede Wrote: > Things we have (like every binary release [and I assume, an implicit > promise of keeping it that way] downloadable forever), the source code > to /both/ the front end and the back end distributed every time -- for > both reading example usage, learning by looking at unittests, and for a > deep understanding of both the compiler and the library code in detail, > ... it's stuff like this we don't advertise enough. (( Of course, not to > mention actual language highlights that are really smashing! But they're > outside of this post.)) > > And the parts of D that are unique, we don't see them splashed all over > the net either. It can and should be possible without the PR budget of > Oracle, too. > > Anybody over 40 knows that Pascal was an excellent language for > programmming classes. (Yes, it was even created for that purpose, > originally.) But then, nobody at all knows that out of all "known" > languages, D is (by FAR!!) the one a university /should/ choose as the > introductory language. Hah, and even fewer can imagine that D is the > language they should use in advanced classes! And, thus, virtually > nobody knows that being blessed with having originally learned a > language that has the strength to carry you all the way from intro to > PhD, makes you seriously privileged. And with a robust and solid mother > tongue like this, forages into C++, Java, Ruby, Haskell, Scheme, ASM, > and the like, will seem like a breeze, and don't destroy or *undo* /the > very foundations of/ your world as a programmer. Yes! I may continue to bitch, but you are so right. D is extraordinarily cool! Poa sana as I could say in the domain of my current residency. Somehow we have to advance the announcements and learn newsgroups so that they are primary, and change perceptions such that the "suggestions for the next version of D" newsgroup - currently the main newsgroup - is a specialist affair that most readers think they can safely ignore. Walters logic is unchallengeable, but most of life isn't about logic, it's about perceptions. D is great. How do we spread that particular perception?
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: > > Another very *BIG* issue is lack of mainstream tools support. > > C++98 was finished before starting C++0x. A lot of effort was made to make > mainstream tools to support C++. Most tools demangle C++ names (even when > they aren't standard!). At least GDB should be able to do that, and > Valgrind and GNU binutils, if you want people to be comfortable working > with D. There are patches here and there but nothing works out of the box. A critical error that keeps being made.. in MOST compiled languages, the authors of the compilers are not the ones that are producing the eco-systems above them. Even for the VM based languages, the language/compiler/runtime authors rarely venture much above those. Eclipse isn't a sun invention, nor are any of the other development environments. Microsoft is about the only one that produces an large tool chain, but the groups that do the various parts are different. The compiler team doesn't produce (or in many cases even use) Visual Studio. Etc.. So, want the tool chain to mature.. go to work. Work with the GDB community to build and incorporate changes. The same with all the things you want to see changed or created. If there's things that need to change in what the compiler emits, Walter has shown himself to be willing to rapidly change them where the required changes are clearly described in terms of both 'what' and 'why'. In other words, "it's broken" isn't sufficient but "if the frobble was changed to frobnosticator for each wobble, it would work" results in the next release having that change made. > I think what D1 is *really* missing is that 2 things: completeness and > tools support. Without that is really hard to take it seriously. > > I think the D team should be working more in that direction before > finishing D2. I know is very boring comparing it to making D2, but I think > that is what is transmitted from D maintainers: "D1 is boring, don't pay > attention to it, D2 is fun, let's play with that!". And this is what > happening. People are playing with D2 and forgetting to finish D1. If you've gotten the impression that "d1 is boring" is the message from whatever this "the d team" (team suggests many people, but there's really just a tiny few involved -- this isn't microsoft or sun with hundreds of worker ants) is, then you're impression is off. The message is "d1 is only receiving bug fixes -- and only those with the right balance of risk/reward". > The Tango vs. Phobos is still a *BIG* issue for D1. I think don't > addressing that is a huge error. It's only hurting D1 and preventing its > adoption. > > The result is 2 incomplete, unsupported (by mainstream tools) languages. This is, in my honest opinion, the most clearly debatable point. I happen to have originally been on the side of "we must do something for D1" but since then I've agreed that the effort is best spent moving forward than disrupting the current. --- All of the above is _my_ opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own. Later, Brad
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright wrote: grauzone wrote: But C++ programs still compile and run correctly with C++0x compilers. True enough, but that wasn't true for C++98, or C89. Nobody refused to use C or C++ because of that. At the time, C[++] users didn't feel like they exactly had a choice, did they? I bet none of the projects on dsource are even compilable with dmd2 (even if they were written for D2.0). Take any C++ project from 15 years ago and I bet it won't compile today, either. And _many_ projects probably need minor fixes, before they compile with the latest dmd1 compiler. Nearly all of those are due to inadvertent reliance on bugs in D1. You see this quite a bit in the C++ world. Every time g++ gets updated, I have to tweak something in my sources. Every binary release of dmd is available for download. If you require an unchanging compiler, it's trivial to operate that way. dmd isn't going to auto-update itself and break your compiles. Now, that is something the random user doesn't expect. Right? And his boss definitely not. As part of our Public Front (as in "keeping up appearances", the TV-show), shouldn't we make it a point not to lose public awareness of such good things? (Meaning, it's not enough to have it mentioned in an obscure niche of a corner of a second-level reference to documentation.) __ ** The following is way off-topic, so don't read it ** And it's written on a Saturday night, before the pub. Yesterday, I got into a discussion about the merits of Picasso, Dali, and a third [local] painter. One of us had read the book written by Picasso's last wife. Picasso lived a life like any sane man would [or should] dream of: Wife, lover, and random paintees. Heads of state and celebrities bowing to their knees before him, etc. One day his wife and his mistress together approached him, stating that this can't go on, it's intolerable. You have to choose or do something!!! Picasso looked at them, took a sip of his wine, a slow puff of his cigar, and then remarked "I'm fine." To their astounded faces, he continued "If the two of you have a problem, then go sort it out between yourselves." No wonder he had it in hand. And, IMHO, with the crappy paintings he did [at the top of his time], nobody modest, honest and humble would have got a living off of that stuff. What's the relevance of this story to us?? Well, it is all about how you handle things like the public opinion and the attitudes of folks around you. Even if D were an amateur language with bribed articles on CUJ and DDJ, with the right attitude, you could get away with having the world believe this is the Holy Grail of languages. So, let's not do the opposite, please. Things we have (like every binary release [and I assume, an implicit promise of keeping it that way] downloadable forever), the source code to /both/ the front end and the back end distributed every time -- for both reading example usage, learning by looking at unittests, and for a deep understanding of both the compiler and the library code in detail, ... it's stuff like this we don't advertise enough. (( Of course, not to mention actual language highlights that are really smashing! But they're outside of this post.)) And the parts of D that are unique, we don't see them splashed all over the net either. It can and should be possible without the PR budget of Oracle, too. Anybody over 40 knows that Pascal was an excellent language for programmming classes. (Yes, it was even created for that purpose, originally.) But then, nobody at all knows that out of all "known" languages, D is (by FAR!!) the one a university /should/ choose as the introductory language. Hah, and even fewer can imagine that D is the language they should use in advanced classes! And, thus, virtually nobody knows that being blessed with having originally learned a language that has the strength to carry you all the way from intro to PhD, makes you seriously privileged. And with a robust and solid mother tongue like this, forages into C++, Java, Ruby, Haskell, Scheme, ASM, and the like, will seem like a breeze, and don't destroy or *undo* /the very foundations of/ your world as a programmer.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Leandro Lucarella wrote: D1 is INCOMPLETE (for example pre/post conditions inheritance are missing). I tend to forget which features are there for real what aren't (there are a few, true, but still). Array ops weren't there for a long time, many argued that D1 wasn't complete without them, and a few months ago I added them in. As far as I can tell, nobody cared about array ops. In C++ land, only one compiler actually completely implements C++98, and this is after more than 10 years. (Exported templates and template name lookup rules remain unimplemented by major compilers.) (P.S. Digital Mars C++ does the correct name lookup rules!) The fact is, nobody actually cares about those incomplete features. Nobody uses exported templates, even if they are using a compiler that supports it. So that leaves contract inheritance. I find it hard to see how not having it is a showstopper for using D1. Contracts in D haven't been the big win I thought they might be at first. They aren't use much at all. There are a lot of other issues that do make a big difference, and those are the issues that get attention. We've got only so many chips (time) to play with, and it's real important that we play them for maximum effect. Another very *BIG* issue is lack of mainstream tools support. C++98 was finished before starting C++0x. A lot of effort was made to make mainstream tools to support C++. Most tools demangle C++ names (even when they aren't standard!). At least GDB should be able to do that, and Valgrind and GNU binutils, if you want people to be comfortable working with D. There are patches here and there but nothing works out of the box. GDB does have an official D mode. There are demanglers for D identifiers. Can you submit patches for GDB to the official source tree? I think what D1 is *really* missing is that 2 things: completeness and tools support. Without that is really hard to take it seriously. I think the D team should be working more in that direction before finishing D2. I know is very boring comparing it to making D2, but I think that is what is transmitted from D maintainers: "D1 is boring, don't pay attention to it, D2 is fun, let's play with that!". And this is what happening. People are playing with D2 and forgetting to finish D1. It isn't about boring. It's about allocating our very limited resources for maximum effect. If I thought that contract inheritance was a showstopper for D1, it'd move way up on the priority list. But I have a hard time believing it is a showstopper, like array ops turned out to not be. Most of the work I do on dmd is bug fixes, and nearly all of those wind up in D1 as well. It's just not true that D1 is being overlooked or ignored, and the D1 changelog should amply illustrate that. http://www.digitalmars.com/d/1.0/changelog.html The Tango vs. Phobos is still a *BIG* issue for D1. I think don't addressing that is a huge error. It's only hurting D1 and preventing its adoption. Doing a merge would be a very breaking change. D2's support for Tango is probably the biggest breaking change in moving D1 code to D2. The result is 2 incomplete, unsupported (by mainstream tools) languages.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Tomas Lindquist Olsen escribió: On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Walter Bright wrote: Steve Teale wrote: I am not criticizing you. I think you are doing a great job under the pressure of a slew of suggestions. But maybe a line in the sand at some point? But there *is* a line in the sand - D1. OK so for those who crave stability there is D1.x, but when all the focus appears to be on D2, what level of confidence is afforded to D1 users. Can a project Manager cross his heart and say that D1 will still be alive and well in five years time? This just makes me very frustrated. Every fix going into D2 that also applies to D1 has been folded into D1. There are even some fixes that only apply to D1 that only go into D1. These average about 20 per month. D1 even got the FreeBSD port before D2. What other language gets that kind of support? A lot of good points have been brought forward in this thread. To me the big problem with D1 is that we *still* don't have a conforming (what does that even mean with D) compiler. Yes I'm thinking forward reference problems and such. Sure, these are hard problems to fix in the compiler, at least at this point. It's something that should have been fixed immediately when the first bug report came in. From my work on LDC I've seen a lot of the DMD frontend source code, its glitches, but of course also those "wow, that's neat" moments. However, one thing is very certain, it has some horrible problems with order-of-things issues, which the spec says should not matter. I'm talking about forward references, differing semantic trees depending on the order of declarations, imports etc. even the order in which modules are passed on the command line can affect the resulting semantic trees (yes I mean AST, but DMD has no distinction, it rewrites the AST happily until it thinks the result is sane). The main feeling I've come to settle on during the soon two years I've spent with LDC, is: we need a new frontend! D1 and D2 both have these problems, and they're not going away by themselves. -Tomas That's my feeling also. A new front-end must be done, and the specification of the language must be clear in every aspect. No surprises.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright, el 8 de mayo a las 11:56 me escribiste: > Steve Teale wrote: > >I am not criticizing you. I think you are doing a great job under the > >pressure of a slew of suggestions. But maybe a line in the sand at > >some point? > > But there *is* a line in the sand - D1. > > >OK so for those who crave stability there is D1.x, but when all the > >focus appears to be on D2, what level of confidence is afforded to D1 > >users. Can a project Manager cross his heart and say that D1 will > >still be alive and well in five years time? > > This just makes me very frustrated. Every fix going into D2 that also applies > to D1 has been folded into D1. There are even some fixes that only apply to > D1 > that only go into D1. These average about 20 per month. D1 even got the > FreeBSD port before D2. What other language gets that kind of support? D1 is INCOMPLETE (for example pre/post conditions inheritance are missing). I tend to forget which features are there for real what aren't (there are a few, true, but still). Another very *BIG* issue is lack of mainstream tools support. C++98 was finished before starting C++0x. A lot of effort was made to make mainstream tools to support C++. Most tools demangle C++ names (even when they aren't standard!). At least GDB should be able to do that, and Valgrind and GNU binutils, if you want people to be comfortable working with D. There are patches here and there but nothing works out of the box. I think what D1 is *really* missing is that 2 things: completeness and tools support. Without that is really hard to take it seriously. I think the D team should be working more in that direction before finishing D2. I know is very boring comparing it to making D2, but I think that is what is transmitted from D maintainers: "D1 is boring, don't pay attention to it, D2 is fun, let's play with that!". And this is what happening. People are playing with D2 and forgetting to finish D1. The Tango vs. Phobos is still a *BIG* issue for D1. I think don't addressing that is a huge error. It's only hurting D1 and preventing its adoption. The result is 2 incomplete, unsupported (by mainstream tools) languages. -- Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/ GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145 104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05) No existe nada más intenso que un reloj, ni nada más flaco que una bicicleta. No intenso como el café, ni flaco como escopeta. -- Ricardo Vaporeso
Re: What's the current state of D?
On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Walter Bright wrote: > Steve Teale wrote: >> >> I am not criticizing you. I think you are doing a great job under the >> pressure of a slew of suggestions. But maybe a line in the sand at >> some point? > > But there *is* a line in the sand - D1. > >> OK so for those who crave stability there is D1.x, but when all the >> focus appears to be on D2, what level of confidence is afforded to D1 >> users. Can a project Manager cross his heart and say that D1 will >> still be alive and well in five years time? > > This just makes me very frustrated. Every fix going into D2 that also > applies to D1 has been folded into D1. There are even some fixes that only > apply to D1 that only go into D1. These average about 20 per month. D1 even > got the FreeBSD port before D2. What other language gets that kind of > support? > > A lot of good points have been brought forward in this thread. To me the big problem with D1 is that we *still* don't have a conforming (what does that even mean with D) compiler. Yes I'm thinking forward reference problems and such. Sure, these are hard problems to fix in the compiler, at least at this point. It's something that should have been fixed immediately when the first bug report came in. >From my work on LDC I've seen a lot of the DMD frontend source code, its glitches, but of course also those "wow, that's neat" moments. However, one thing is very certain, it has some horrible problems with order-of-things issues, which the spec says should not matter. I'm talking about forward references, differing semantic trees depending on the order of declarations, imports etc. even the order in which modules are passed on the command line can affect the resulting semantic trees (yes I mean AST, but DMD has no distinction, it rewrites the AST happily until it thinks the result is sane). The main feeling I've come to settle on during the soon two years I've spent with LDC, is: we need a new frontend! D1 and D2 both have these problems, and they're not going away by themselves. -Tomas
Re: What's the current state of D?
Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote: > Tyro[a.c.edwards] wrote: > > On 5/9/2009 3:38 AM, Steve Teale wrote: > >> Walter Bright Wrote: > >> > >>> Steve Teale wrote: > This is the sort of answer that will kill D. The guy comes back after > 2 years, asks a straight question, and get's told "business as usual, > we're still arguing among ourselves about what it should be". > > Maybe Tiobe is right! Lots of others may not even bother to ask. They > just visit the newsgroup, read a page of it, and conclude "same old, > same old", and go away. > > D should be D, not maybe 1.043, or let's wait a while and see what > happens with D2. Potential real users hate uncertainty. If they are > going to commit, then D must do so too. > >>> What bothers me about this sentiment is that every other mainstream > >>> language undergoes revision, sometimes major ones, but that never seems > >>> to be an excuse for people to not use it. > >>> > >>> For example, C++ is quite in flux with C++0x. > >>> > >>> The only languages that are not undergoing revision are dead ones. > >> > >> Yes Walter, but C++ went through a tedious standardization process - > >> itself a long argument. So there was some basis for people to think > >> that it had 'got there'. > >> > >> But to come back after 2 years and find the same stuff still going on > >> is depressing - been there done that. OK, it didn't put me off, I'm > >> still in there, but it bothers me. I'd be dishonest if I said otherwise. > >> > >> I am not criticizing you. I think you are doing a great job under the > >> pressure of a slew of suggestions. But maybe a line in the sand at > >> some point? > >> > >> OK so for those who crave stability there is D1.x, but when all the > >> focus appears to be on D2, what level of confidence is afforded to D1 > >> users. Can a project Manager cross his heart and say that D1 will > >> still be alive and well in five years time? > >> > > > > This is quite interesting! Before there was D1, I can remember the same > > requests being submitted over and over again. Tool developers complained > > that they could not use D for anything serious because of its constant > > state of flux. They continuously requested that a line be drawn. Shortly > > after that line was drawn in January 2007, a good majority of the > > community complained that it wasn't exactly what they asked for and a > > majority of the most active members of the community disappeared into > > thin air. > > > > The sad thing is, even after D1 became stable following a number of bug > > fixes, very few people used it for much of anything. Those "advocates of > > stability" all disappeared; abandoning their tools/projects in the process. > > > > The same thing is beginning again and it seems to me that instead of > > something that is actually useful, people a waiting for MicroMoney or > > some other name brand begins to invest in their own D compiler. As far > > as I see it, there will come a time when D language will soar above all > > the rest (not only in capability, which it already does, but also > > commercial usage), I will continue to support it until then and well > > beyond and I'm quite sure that I'm not the only one. For all the > > Naysayers out there... Keep saying nay and go the hell away. D2 is just > > where it is supposed to be. Lets not end up in the same mess we did by > > trying to make impatient people happy and releasing D1. > > > > Andrew > > Very well and heartfelt put. > > D needs many things, but probably above all it needs the dedication of > bright people. > > I've had a great time at BoostCon, and enjoyed many interesting > conversations with as many bright people. Beman Dawes, the originator of > Boost and an extraordinary gentleman, gave me a little history of Boost. > Essentially Boost has been toiling in anonymity until Dave Abrahams came > about. Dave is a design, coding, and organizational powerhouse all in > one. He not only contributed a great deal of design and code to Boost, > but also managed organizational and logistics aspects, in addition to > exercising the charisma necessary for attracting other extraordinarily > qualified people to dedicate their prime to Boost. That's a rather rare find. Typically, that would require the contribution of many individuals to achieve the same effect. Even if you only consider the time required to do all that, it can be a tall order! > And it has snowballed > ever since. It was amazing just being at Boostcon to see how much > expertise punch those people packed. > > We are lacking such a powerhouse for D. Walter is a great lone wolf kind > of coder, but not a team organizer and charismatic leader. Things have > been changed to the better since he has made Phobos accessible on > dsource.org and since he released the source of the compiler. > Integration with druntime was another great step forward (thanks Sean!)
Re: What's the current state of D?
BCS wrote: Reply to F, Finally, new releases are provided as optional, not as compulsory. If someone wants to stick with one compiler version, he/she could do the job with that version and that's all. The one issue with that re 2.0 is that you can be faced with choosing between working thought a breaking change or not getting bug fixes ever again. Yes, but there's no way it would make sense to standardize on a particular release of D2 -- it's still in way too much of an alpha state. In another six months, I think it would make sense.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Tyro[a.c.edwards] wrote: On 5/9/2009 11:24 AM, grauzone wrote: beyond and I'm quite sure that I'm not the only one. For all the Naysayers out there... Keep saying nay and go the hell away. D2 is just where it is supposed to be. Let’s not end up in the same mess we did by trying to make impatient people happy and releasing D1. What about the people who want to use D for something actually useful? Well, for those cases, there is D1. Which, if I may add, is extremely stable. Agreed -- I haven't had to update my D1 code due to compiler changes, even if it's over a year old. Only library changes force me to update it. The only reason I bother updating my compiler is because of bugfixes and Tango updates which require those bugfixes.
Re: What's the current state of D?
torhu wrote: On 09.05.2009 00:29, Christopher Wright wrote: Open source projects tend to have to support wider ranges of compilers. I've seen OSS projects where they prioritized issues specific to gcc-3.4.2 as highly as any other issue, even if the developers typically used the 4.x branch. That's probably because they wanted to be cross-platform, since 3.4.2 was the latest GCC supported by minGw for a long time. No; there has sadly never been a release of Enlightenment DR17 for MinGW.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Simen Kjaeraas wrote: > Lutger wrote: > >> - these other languages go out of their way to make new releases >> backwards >> compatible, sometimes at great costs. They almost never completely >> succeed >> though. > > And D1 makes an effort to follow the spec, and will not incorporate > breaking changes. D2 is, in many ways, a whole new language. Sure, > you could argue that D1 code should be compilable in D2, but it > would matter no more than the argument that C code should be > compilable in D1. > > -- > Simen I'm certainly not making that argument. In the talk Andrei and Walter gave at the D conference they mentioned the design goal 'no issue left behind' This is what makes D evolution so much more interesting. Yet it has a price. Looking at C# for comparison, it is about the same age (C is not fair, too old): you can easily upgrade from 2.0 to 3.5 and beyond. Most important part of that ease is the ability to use older libraries in a newer environment. Still, lots of issues in C# are already beyond fixing.
Re: What's the current state of D?
grauzone wrote: beyond and I'm quite sure that I'm not the only one. For all the Naysayers out there... Keep saying nay and go the hell away. D2 is just where it is supposed to be. Let’s not end up in the same mess we did by trying to make impatient people happy and releasing D1. What about the people who want to use D for something actually useful? They can if they really want, just as much as others can keep on naysaying if they really want :o). Andrei
Re: What's the current state of D?
On 5/9/2009 11:24 AM, grauzone wrote: beyond and I'm quite sure that I'm not the only one. For all the Naysayers out there... Keep saying nay and go the hell away. D2 is just where it is supposed to be. Let’s not end up in the same mess we did by trying to make impatient people happy and releasing D1. What about the people who want to use D for something actually useful? Well, for those cases, there is D1. Which, if I may add, is extremely stable. Take a network administrator running his server or firewall on say DragonFly or any of the many flavors of BSD or Linux; he does not upgrade his server with nightly builds, he sticks instead with a "stable," well tested branch of the OS and experiments with "current." When current becomes stable, the OS developer does not stop developing his OS, he continues on with his vision while the "users" further stress-tests the newly stabilized branch and take steps to find and correct any holes in the system. And our system administrator, well, he doesn't switch until he is comfortable that the newly stabilized branch meets all his criteria for upgrade. If they are not met... he waits until the OS branches again. We cannot expect the compiler developer to stop developing compilers until after the tools developers decide to build tools. He has done his job, which is to develop a stable, documented compiler. Use it to develop your tools which will in turn allow the compiler/language to gain popularity. Report any bug reports on anything that seems out of the ordinary so that it can either be clarified in documentation or corrected with code. Walter is a damn good Engineer but I don't think his interests lie in writing tools (IDE and the like). So those people that do write those tools may want to take the "stable" compiler and start developing. So what if this feature "that is in D2" is not in D1? Use what you have in D1 and develop your tools and simply stay abreast with the development of D2 so that when it is time to switch, you are not in the dark. Andrew
Re: What's the current state of D?
On Fri, 08 May 2009 16:20:48 -0700, Walter Bright wrote: > Frank Benoit wrote: >> can you allow "shared" or "__gshared" in D1 as do-nothing keywords? That >> will make it more easy to write code that compiles for D1 and D2. >> Or is there a trick to accomplish this? > > I think that making code that will compile under both is an impractical > task. I'm thinking that D1 is really the prototype edition of D, and D2 will be the first release edition of the "D Programming Language". By this I mean that D1 has worked out to be a sounding board that has helped define what the design requirements for "D" have really been. The process is not over as usage of D1 is still pointing out things that need to be in D2. This is a good thing. And if we end up with two languages (D1=D_proto and D2=D_proper) in which both are stable, then that is not such a bad outcome. -- Derek Parnell Melbourne, Australia skype: derek.j.parnell
Re: What's the current state of D?
Tyro[a.c.edwards] wrote: On 5/9/2009 3:38 AM, Steve Teale wrote: Walter Bright Wrote: Steve Teale wrote: This is the sort of answer that will kill D. The guy comes back after 2 years, asks a straight question, and get's told "business as usual, we're still arguing among ourselves about what it should be". Maybe Tiobe is right! Lots of others may not even bother to ask. They just visit the newsgroup, read a page of it, and conclude "same old, same old", and go away. D should be D, not maybe 1.043, or let's wait a while and see what happens with D2. Potential real users hate uncertainty. If they are going to commit, then D must do so too. What bothers me about this sentiment is that every other mainstream language undergoes revision, sometimes major ones, but that never seems to be an excuse for people to not use it. For example, C++ is quite in flux with C++0x. The only languages that are not undergoing revision are dead ones. Yes Walter, but C++ went through a tedious standardization process - itself a long argument. So there was some basis for people to think that it had 'got there'. But to come back after 2 years and find the same stuff still going on is depressing - been there done that. OK, it didn't put me off, I'm still in there, but it bothers me. I'd be dishonest if I said otherwise. I am not criticizing you. I think you are doing a great job under the pressure of a slew of suggestions. But maybe a line in the sand at some point? OK so for those who crave stability there is D1.x, but when all the focus appears to be on D2, what level of confidence is afforded to D1 users. Can a project Manager cross his heart and say that D1 will still be alive and well in five years time? This is quite interesting! Before there was D1, I can remember the same requests being submitted over and over again. Tool developers complained that they could not use D for anything serious because of its constant state of flux. They continuously requested that a line be drawn. Shortly after that line was drawn in January 2007, a good majority of the community complained that it wasn't exactly what they asked for and a majority of the most active members of the community disappeared into thin air. The sad thing is, even after D1 became stable following a number of bug fixes, very few people used it for much of anything. Those "advocates of stability" all disappeared; abandoning their tools/projects in the process. The same thing is beginning again and it seems to me that instead of something that is actually useful, people a waiting for MicroMoney or some other name brand begins to invest in their own D compiler. As far as I see it, there will come a time when D language will soar above all the rest (not only in capability, which it already does, but also commercial usage), I will continue to support it until then and well beyond and I'm quite sure that I'm not the only one. For all the Naysayers out there... Keep saying nay and go the hell away. D2 is just where it is supposed to be. Let’s not end up in the same mess we did by trying to make impatient people happy and releasing D1. Andrew Very well and heartfelt put. D needs many things, but probably above all it needs the dedication of bright people. I've had a great time at BoostCon, and enjoyed many interesting conversations with as many bright people. Beman Dawes, the originator of Boost and an extraordinary gentleman, gave me a little history of Boost. Essentially Boost has been toiling in anonymity until Dave Abrahams came about. Dave is a design, coding, and organizational powerhouse all in one. He not only contributed a great deal of design and code to Boost, but also managed organizational and logistics aspects, in addition to exercising the charisma necessary for attracting other extraordinarily qualified people to dedicate their prime to Boost. And it has snowballed ever since. It was amazing just being at Boostcon to see how much expertise punch those people packed. We are lacking such a powerhouse for D. Walter is a great lone wolf kind of coder, but not a team organizer and charismatic leader. Things have been changed to the better since he has made Phobos accessible on dsource.org and since he released the source of the compiler. Integration with druntime was another great step forward (thanks Sean!) Soon we may convince Walter to put the entire dmd source on dsource.org, which would improve things even more. But the role of "Dave" for D is still up for grabs. Of course it's not that easy to find that, but in the meantime there's a lot of good things to be done. If you do something great, sooner or later it will be picked up. The perfect example is Don, who became a prominent contributor solely through the sheer quality and quantity of his work. (There are many others that come to mind, but please allow me to stay with one because as soon as I mention more than one, I'd feel
Re: What's the current state of D?
beyond and I'm quite sure that I'm not the only one. For all the Naysayers out there... Keep saying nay and go the hell away. D2 is just where it is supposed to be. Let’s not end up in the same mess we did by trying to make impatient people happy and releasing D1. What about the people who want to use D for something actually useful?
Re: What's the current state of D?
On 5/9/2009 3:38 AM, Steve Teale wrote: Walter Bright Wrote: Steve Teale wrote: This is the sort of answer that will kill D. The guy comes back after 2 years, asks a straight question, and get's told "business as usual, we're still arguing among ourselves about what it should be". Maybe Tiobe is right! Lots of others may not even bother to ask. They just visit the newsgroup, read a page of it, and conclude "same old, same old", and go away. D should be D, not maybe 1.043, or let's wait a while and see what happens with D2. Potential real users hate uncertainty. If they are going to commit, then D must do so too. What bothers me about this sentiment is that every other mainstream language undergoes revision, sometimes major ones, but that never seems to be an excuse for people to not use it. For example, C++ is quite in flux with C++0x. The only languages that are not undergoing revision are dead ones. Yes Walter, but C++ went through a tedious standardization process - itself a long argument. So there was some basis for people to think that it had 'got there'. But to come back after 2 years and find the same stuff still going on is depressing - been there done that. OK, it didn't put me off, I'm still in there, but it bothers me. I'd be dishonest if I said otherwise. I am not criticizing you. I think you are doing a great job under the pressure of a slew of suggestions. But maybe a line in the sand at some point? OK so for those who crave stability there is D1.x, but when all the focus appears to be on D2, what level of confidence is afforded to D1 users. Can a project Manager cross his heart and say that D1 will still be alive and well in five years time? This is quite interesting! Before there was D1, I can remember the same requests being submitted over and over again. Tool developers complained that they could not use D for anything serious because of its constant state of flux. They continuously requested that a line be drawn. Shortly after that line was drawn in January 2007, a good majority of the community complained that it wasn't exactly what they asked for and a majority of the most active members of the community disappeared into thin air. The sad thing is, even after D1 became stable following a number of bug fixes, very few people used it for much of anything. Those "advocates of stability" all disappeared; abandoning their tools/projects in the process. The same thing is beginning again and it seems to me that instead of something that is actually useful, people a waiting for MicroMoney or some other name brand begins to invest in their own D compiler. As far as I see it, there will come a time when D language will soar above all the rest (not only in capability, which it already does, but also commercial usage), I will continue to support it until then and well beyond and I'm quite sure that I'm not the only one. For all the Naysayers out there... Keep saying nay and go the hell away. D2 is just where it is supposed to be. Let’s not end up in the same mess we did by trying to make impatient people happy and releasing D1. Andrew
Re: What's the current state of D?
grauzone wrote: Nearly all of those are due to inadvertent reliance on bugs in D1. You see this quite a bit in the C++ world. Every time g++ gets updated, I have to tweak something in my sources. In the case of D, the problem is that sometimes you don't really know if it's a bug or a feature. So you file a bug, and if nothing else, the spec should be clarified. -- Simen
Re: What's the current state of D?
Lutger wrote: - these other languages go out of their way to make new releases backwards compatible, sometimes at great costs. They almost never completely succeed though. And D1 makes an effort to follow the spec, and will not incorporate breaking changes. D2 is, in many ways, a whole new language. Sure, you could argue that D1 code should be compilable in D2, but it would matter no more than the argument that C code should be compilable in D1. -- Simen
Re: What's the current state of D?
On 09.05.2009 00:29, Christopher Wright wrote: Open source projects tend to have to support wider ranges of compilers. I've seen OSS projects where they prioritized issues specific to gcc-3.4.2 as highly as any other issue, even if the developers typically used the 4.x branch. That's probably because they wanted to be cross-platform, since 3.4.2 was the latest GCC supported by minGw for a long time.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Frank Benoit wrote: can you allow "shared" or "__gshared" in D1 as do-nothing keywords? That will make it more easy to write code that compiles for D1 and D2. Or is there a trick to accomplish this? I think that making code that will compile under both is an impractical task.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Sean Kelly wrote: It's a way to declare something as "classic global" so you can sidestep any bugs that crop up with the implementation of 'shared'. The hope is that you'll eventually just be able to do a search/replace of '__gshared' to 'shared' once everything is working correctly. I like the moniker "classic global", or perhaps even better, "global classic" as a term for it.
Re: What's the current state of D?
dsimcha wrote: Just out of curiosity, though, you use __gshared in a lot of places and I haven't seen it in any of the discussions. What is it? __gshared is the "cowboy" approach, it means make it global and I don't care about any weenie synchronization or type checking. It's handy for initial ports of "I just want it to compile, I'll fix it later". Naturally, it won't be allowed in safe mode.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Lutger wrote: > - other mainstream languages release new compilers and features every couple > of years, you do so every couple of months! Rapid evolution is a good thing. For every improvement that will be made to the D2 language, I'd rather see that improvement in a week than in a couple of years. *Especially* for improvements that break backwards compatibility. D2 is incomplete right now. The faster it evolves, the sooner it'll reach completion, at which point it should be as stable as any language. -- Rainer Deyke - rain...@eldwood.com
Re: What's the current state of D?
Sean Kelly wrote: == Quote from Steve Teale (steve.te...@britseyeview.com)'s article OK so for those who crave stability there is D1.x, but when all the focus appears to be on D2, what level of confidence is afforded to D1 users. Can a project Manager cross his heart and say that D1 will still be alive and well in five years time? Will that project manager care? Most build teams don't update compiler versions very often--once a version has been settled upon that's pretty much it, unless a show-stopping bug appears during development that for some reason can't be worked around. In fact, I can't even see a team bothering to speculate about the future popularity of a language when choosing it for a project. The only thing that matters is whether it's a good decision today, not five years from now. If that weren't the case, then there would have never been a call for COBOL programmers during the Y2K transition. In the Windows world, you get a new compiler every two to three years, so that's hardly an issue. Similarly with Java. Open source projects tend to have to support wider ranges of compilers. I've seen OSS projects where they prioritized issues specific to gcc-3.4.2 as highly as any other issue, even if the developers typically used the 4.x branch.
Re: What's the current state of D?
Walter Bright schrieb: > dsimcha wrote: >> Exactly my feelings, but I'll add that the time to make huge, sweeping >> changes >> like the ones we're seeing now is before the language becomes >> mainstream. Once >> the language has a large base of crufty production code that nobody still >> understands and can fix quickly and easily when the language changes, >> it becomes >> much harder to make these kinds of changes. > > Yes. > > The next D2 update will have one such change, which has been planned for > maybe the past year. All static and global variables will default to > being thread local (instead of being implicitly shared). Doing this is > disruptive, but is critical to credibly supporting multithreaded > programming. > > In testing this out, I've uncovered at least a dozen implicit sharing > bugs in Phobos. I think this change will have a big payoff for > multithreaded code. can you allow "shared" or "__gshared" in D1 as do-nothing keywords? That will make it more easy to write code that compiles for D1 and D2. Or is there a trick to accomplish this?
