The January meeting took place on January 13th at 14:00 UTC. It
was a quarterly meeting, which means we invited representatives
from companies using D in production. We normally would have
scheduled it on the first Friday of the month, but delayed it a
bit to allow everyone time to return and/or recover from the
holiday period. The meeting lasted around 2.5 hours.
Unfortunately, I overlooked that audio output was disabled on OBS
Studio when I recorded the meeting. I can hear myself, but no one
else. All the good stuff was said by everyone else. I enlisted
the help of some of the other attendees in recalling what we
discussed. So what follows is a very light summary of a rather
long meeting, cobbled together from the memories of a few
different people several days after. I did not get input from
everyone who attended the meeting, so I welcome any of them to
fill in any additional gaps they may remember.
The following people attended (those with DLF next to their names
are either D Language Foundation board members, paid employees,
or affiliated volunteers):
* Walter Bright (DLF)
* Iain Buclaw (GDC/DLF)
* Ali Çehreli (DLF/Mercedes Benz R & D North America)
* John Colvin (Symmetry)
* Martin Kinkelin (DLF/LDC)
* Dennis Korpel (DLF)
* Mario Kröplin (Funkwerk)
* Max Haughton (DLF/Symmetry)
* Mathias Lang (DLF/Symmetry)
* Razvan Nitu (DLF)
* Mike Parker (DLF)
* Robert Schadek (DLF/Symmetry)
* Amaury Séchet (Symmetry)
* Robert Toth (Ucora)
* Bastiaan Veelo (SARC)
## The summary
### Mathias, Martin, Robert T., Iain, Max, and Ali
Robert said he was there to listen this time, but he did
contribute throughout. Martin had not had any time since the last
meeting to prepare the next LDC release. Iain, Max, Mathias, and
Ali simply had nothing to report. I joked with Mathias that I was
glad I was recording it (he usually has more than one thing to
report, and often brings up something else at the end when I ask
if anyone has anything else). Next time, I should knock on wood.
### Robert S.
Robert gave an update on the Bugzilla-GitHub migration. He
provided some details about its current state and hoped it would
be ready to use by the end of the month. I asked if, when the
time comes, I should just let it run on a VPN rather than my PC.
He said that because of the GitHub API's rate limit, it shouldn't
hurt to let it run on my PC. There were then some questions about
details, e.g., should the script include only Bugzilla numbers in
the migrated issues or link to the original, and I mentioned we
should get in touch with Brad Roberts to set the Bugzilla into
read-only mode. (This came up again in our February meeting three
weeks later.)
Robert had already migrated the tools repository issues, so if
anyone wants to see what that looks like they can now. [All of
the issues from the author
`dlang-bugzilla-migration`](https://github.com/dlang/tools/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+author%3Adlang-bugzilla-migration+sort%3Aupdated-desc) were migrated from Bugzilla.
### Bastiaan
Bastiaan had encountered an issue on his project at work related
to the DMD installer on Windows. The installer has the option to
add the compiler's path to the `PATH` environment variable, but
checking it causes it to add the path to the 32-bit compiler even
on 64-bit systems. This came to their attention when DMD suddenly
started running out of memory when compiling their code base but
was only using 4GB. [He filed an
issue](https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23623) and
[submitted a fix](https://github.com/dlang/installer/pull/555).
Now, the installer with 2.102.0 will set properly the path to the
64-bit compiler on 64-bit systems.
He also brought up a nearly year-old regression with dub related
to `$PACKAGE_DIR` and the `sourceLibrary` package type. This was
initially an annoyance for them but has become a blocker
preventing them from upgrading the compiler since 2.100.0.S Jan
Jurzita did some work on it last year, but it's still open as I
write this summary. I've pinged Mathias and Jan to see if they
can get it resolved.
### John and Amaury
In the summary of our December meeting, you can read [Robert
Schadek's report](https://github.com/dlang/installer/pull/555) of
a Symmetry programmer who moved from D to C# for an internal
project, as well as some of Robert's own frustrations. John came
to us in this meeting to expand on that and asked Amaury along to
provide his perspective.
This was a very long, very heavy discussion. Even if I did have
the audio, there's no way I could reasonably cover in detail
everything that we discussed. You can get the main thrust of the
topic from [a forum post John wrote
up](https://forum.dlang.org/post/xamclovgxzzrjznte...@forum.dlang.org) at the beginning of last December in response to Walter's request for feedback on a Sum Types proposal. Essentially, he's concerned that we keep moving on with new features while there are fundamental problems in the compiler and language that persist. People who are already sold on D and have used it for a long time have learned to live with them, either by working around such issues or ignoring them. That's not an ideal situation, but it's even worse when you're talking about bringing non-D programmers up to speed on D. For them, those little cracks in the foundation add up to a big, gaping hole that turns them off. This is the situation Symmetry and other big D shops face when they have to hire people who have never used D.
Essentially, John and Amaury were making an appeal that we put
more value on a solid foundation. Things should "just work".
The conversation about this snaked back and forth, sometimes
going off on short tangents, with almost everyone providing
input. As I recall, Walter reiterated that he can't do anything
with general descriptions of problems; he needs specific issues
that he can sit down and fix. John and Amaury both provided some
examples. I noted that part of the purpose of my campaign to
collect gripes and wishes was to help us identify the kind of
fundamental problems they described and get them all gathered in
one place and prioritized, then we can figure out how to muster
the resources to fix them. We were (and still are) in the midst
of a period of organizational development, and I expected we'd be
ready to start tackling this sort of thing in April or May. John
said that was great, but he hoped we could make progress on some
things before then.
That's all the detail I have right now on that discussion.
Ultimately, Walter decided to put the Sum Types proposal aside
for now and began directing his efforts toward fixing some
fundamental issues in Bugzilla. At the end of an email discussion
a few weeks later, he and Átila decided that stability and
robustness should be our primary focus for the next year.
I'll again take this opportunity to encourage everyone to send me
your gripes and wishes at soc...@dlang.org. What do you consider
to be fundamental issues with the language, tools, or ecosystem?
Please be as specific as you can.
### Mario
Mario said Funkwerk had no pressing issues. However, he wanted to
know about any potential plans for multiple `alias this`. He
noted that in the old Wiki-based DIP system, [a proposal for the
feature](https://wiki.dlang.org/DIP66) had been conditionally
approved. He recalled the DIP author had begun an implementation.
The status of the DIP had never been updated, so was it still
something we were intending to pursue?
Walter said no, we were not going to support multiple `alias
this`. It has the same issues as multiple inheritance and opens
the door to the problems that arise from that. This took us into
a discussion about `alias this` in classes, and ultimately a
decision that it should be removed from the language.
Mario ended by suggesting that someone should update the wiki
page for DIP 66 to indicate that it's rejected.
Razvan [submitted a PR deprecating `alias this` in
classes](https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/14812) the next day.
Amaury [initiated a forum
discussion](https://forum.dlang.org/thread/roaaoujwgkzednetb...@forum.dlang.org) a few days later. And I've now updated the status of DIP 66.
### Dennis
Dennis asked about the future direction of `-betterC`. A number
of people had raised issues about `-betterC` disabling
DRuntime-dependent features even for CTFE, and while there had
been some small fixes, there had yet been no consensus on how to
solve the problem in general.
He then listed three possible approaches:
* Explicitly annotate code as CTFE-only with new syntax:
`pragma(ctfe)`, `if (ctfe)` etc. Walter noted that the syntax is
an extra `()`.
* Implicitly make functions using DRuntime features as CTFE-only.
This might be surprising and unintuitive
* Generate run-time errors instead of compile-time errors. This
makes errors easier to slip by.
Martin suggested a fourth option: phase out `-betterC` because
it's a "pile of hacks". Dennis considered that but thought
BetterC users would not be happy when it gets deprecated without
a suitable replacement. Walter said that the best approach
couldn't be decided in the meeting, and should be discussed in an
e-mail/forum post.
As a final question, Dennis asked what the "official" intended
use for BetterC was in the first place: just a C migration tool
or also something for new D code. I said `-betterC` shouldn't be
used for writing new code. Walter said it can be used for
whatever calls for it, be it integrating with C, targeting
embedded systems, or any scenario where you don't want to link
DRuntime.
Walter subsequently [submitted a
PR](https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/14913) for the compiler to
recognize `if(__ctfe)` blocks and [a companion
PR](https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/14830) to disable the
generation of `TypeInfo` in `if(__ctfe)` blocks.
### Razvan
Razvan asked what everyone thought about [a specific Bugzilla
issue](https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3720). Given an
aggregate type `F`, the compiler allowed taking the address of a
member function `F.foo` without an instance of `F`, returning a
function pointer rather than a delegate.
Razvan had submitted a PR in December. His fix was to simply type
what is returned as being `void*`. This would keep the current
behavior, but it would be `@system` require a cast to the desired
type in order to use it. However, there were folks that didn't
want to lose the type information and proposed instead to have
some extra typing on the result, such as `void delegate(S*)`.
It seems the end result was a recommendation for the latter, as
that's what Razvan amended the PR to implement. However, that
apparently led to a new issue, and [the PR is yet to be
resolved](https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/14688).
Razvan also let us know that the GSoC application period was
opening on January 23rd, and asked us to contact him if we had
any project ideas or were willing to be a mentor.
### Walter
Walter is always the last to take a turn in our meetings. On this
occasion, he felt like the meeting had gone on long enough.
During the discussion about fundamental problems, he mentioned
his frustrations with how `build.d` is invoked by the compiler
under test when running the test suite. He had nothing else to
report. (This issue with `build.d` was the topic he brought up
during his turn at our February meeting).
### The next meeting
Our next meeting took place on February 3rd at 15:00 UTC. It was
a monthly meeting.
If your company is using D in production and you'd like to send a
representative to our quarterly meetings, please let me know!
We'll do what we can to help solve any issues you may have with
D, but we're also interested in hearing your perspective on the
topics we discuss. Our next quarterly meeting should take place
on April 7th.
