On 1/7/2012 8:10 AM, Don wrote:
Moving AAs from a built-in to a library type has been an unmitigated disaster from the implementation side. And it has so far brought us *nothing* in return. Not "hardly anything", but *NOTHING*. I don't even have any idea of what good could possibly come from it. Note that you CANNOT have multiple implementations on a given platform, or you'll get linker errors! So I think there is more pain to come from it. It seems to have been motivated by religious reasons and nothing more. Why should anyone believe the same argument again?
Having a pluggable interface so the implementation can be changed is all right, as long as the binary API does not change.
If the binary API changes, then of course, two different libraries cannot be linked together. I strongly oppose any changes which would lead to a balkanization of D libraries.
(Consider the disaster C++ has had forever with everyone inventing their own string type. That insured zero interoperability between C++ libraries, a situation that persists even for 10 years after C++ finally acquired a standard string library.)
