grauzone wrote:
Right now, D seems to *intend* to allow arbitrary forward references of
types and functions. But the reality is different. dmd accepts some
forward references, but chokes up on others. For example, forward
references to classes are normally no problem, while enums can't be
forward referenced at all. (Which is funny; you'd think that enums are
simpler than classes.) Structs often require creative rearrangement of
source code to make them work.
For a general overview of forward reference bugs, just search Bugzilla:
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=forward+reference
I think you can say, that forward referencing is quite incomplete and
buggy in dmd. Even worse, it bothers the programmer in everyday
programming. The programmer gets the feeling, he's doing more work
working around compiler bugs, than on his program. There's nothing worse
than a core language feature, that doesn't work as advertised.
Unfortunately, Walter seems to consider these bugs as minor issues, and
apparently, he thinks that amount of work fixing them doesn't pay off.
Although he often fixes some related bugs here and there, the problem
remains.
Conclusion: other than trying to keep a buggy feature, that isn't going
to be fixed, remove it from the language.
Search for the number of RESOLVED "forward reference" bugs: 45
Unfixed, without patch: 44
Unfixed, with patch: 4
So it's about a 50% fix rate.
Now consider all bugs tagged as rejects-valid:
257 not fixed, with no patch.
17 not fixed, but with patch (almost all will be in the next release).
202 fixed.
It's about a 45% fix rate.
For ICE bugs, it's a lot better: 261 fixed, 28 unfixed, 19 with patches.
Almost a 90% fix rate.
So, yeah, the fix rate is pretty bad. But suprisingly, it's NOT worse
for forward reference bugs!
The real problem is that there's about a thousand bugs in bugzilla!!
