It turns out there already was a pull request that does this:https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/1019If you are going to use code that is not merged yet, then maybe it's better to use that one (I've closed my pull request).
Maybe you should reopen your pull, we need definitely a solution for this problem. It seems that the other pull isn't finished in the next two release cycles. We know that your code works partially, that is better than further releases without an auto ref...
