On Friday, 22 May 2020 at 01:22:19 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
Consider the common (because that's how D started out) case of:
----- clibrary.d --------
T massage_data(... many parameters ...);
... 200 more such declarations ...
----- app.d ----------
import clibrary;
void useClibrary( ... parameters ...) {
massage_data(parameters);
}
---------------------
This code, today, does not use annotations and it works. It's
been working
for a long time. Now, we implement the amendment, and it stops
compiling
because useClibrary is @safe and massage_data is @system. The
user is faced
with the following alternatives:
Why are you assuming that the only thing wrong with useClibrary()
is that it would use a C declaration that is @system? All @system
code I've written is @system and wouldn't compile to @safe even
if extern(C) declarations are wrongly annotated as @safe.
What if app uses core.stdc? All those functions have already been
annotated as @system. Any code that uses the C stdlib is going to
break right now anyways.
What's stopping someone from just as easily slapping @trusted: at
the top of app.d? Since there are going to be more issues than
simply calling extern(C) functions.
I find it odd also that you are using one of the rationales
against making @safe the default (that code will break and lazy
solutions will be employed to make them work again), as a means
to make @safe, less memory safe.
