On Tuesday, 18 August 2015 at 21:31:17 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
On 8/18/2015 1:24 PM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
The specific bugs in question have
been fixed, but that doesn't change the general problem.
The reason we have regression tests is to make sure things that
are fixed stay fixed. Codegen bugs also always had the highest
priority.
It doesn't matter. Regression tests protect against the same bugs
reappearing, not new bugs. I'm talking about the general pattern:
optimization PR? Regression a few months later.
Being paralyzed by fear of introducing new bugs is not a way
forward with any project.
When the risk outweighs the gain, what's the point of moving
forward?
(Switching to ddmd, and eventually put the back end in D, will
also help with this. DMC++ is always built with any changes and
tested to exactly duplicate itself, and that filters out a lot
of problems. Unfortunately, DMC++ is a 32 bit program and
doesn't exercise the 64 bit code gen. Again, ddmd will fix
that.)
I don't see how switching to D is going to magically reduce the
number of regressions.
