On Sunday, 14 June 2015 at 11:26:23 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad
wrote:
On Sunday, 14 June 2015 at 11:05:36 UTC, ketmar wrote:
p.s. i.e. it boils down to simple thing: Walter don't like it.
period.
any rationalizing of that is pointless.
The most sensible thing to do with all these may/may not be an
improvement and also the break/don't break my code issues is to
create an experimental branch of DMD after the transition from
C++ to D is finished. Then merge back the good stuff after
several iterations of improvement.
I'm sure Walter will be much more open to changes if there is a
proven demand for it, e.g. if people rave about certain
features in an experimental branch. Changing the main branch
with "might be a little bit better" changes is a hard sell when
competing languages are going stable.
Walter is _very_ firm on this issue, and I very much doubt that
he will ever change his mind. He is convinced that using
condition-based versioning as frequently occurs in C is almost
never done correctly and that it's a horrible idea and that it's
far better to separate out each version into its own version
block, even if that means duplicating code. It came up again at
dconf, and again, he gave his reasons and outright refused to
even consider changing it. And I don't think that he's very happy
that folks have started using static if blocks to get around the
restrictions in version blocks (but given the general nature of
static if blocks, it's not like he can stop folks). He's
absolutely convinced that using conditional expressions in
version blocks is a fundamentally bad design and that anyone
who's doing anything like it is just begging for trouble.
So, it really doesn't matter how many folks think that allowing
arbitrary conditions in version blocks - or even or-ing versions
in version blocks - is something that we should have. Walter is
absolutely convinced that changing how version blocks in D work
would be detrimental to the language, and ultimately, he's the
one in charge. I think that it's pretty clear that spending any
time trying to get it changed is simply a waste of your time.
Language stability has nothing to do with it, and it really
doesn't matter how many users want it.
- Jonathan M Davis
