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digitalmars.D - 10th Birthday for GDC

reply "Iain Buclaw" <ibuclaw gdcproject.org> writes:
Hi all,

On March 22, 2014, GDC will turn 10! \o/

This is a great landmark achievement in brevity for GDC, but we 
still haven't achieved in my personal opinion any levity of 
worthy note.  So much to the point I'm beginning to give doubt 
myself as to how long things can continue with a bus-factor of me.

Lets talk history.

In late 2010, Digital Mars raised awareness with the FSF to start 
the process of merging GDC into GCC.  Nothing then happened until 
a year later when the copyright assignment/disclaimers had been 
completed by most parties.

More silenced followed for a further year until the first set of 
patches were ready for submission, and over the year that 
followed resolving implementation issues, most were spent waiting 
for GCC development to re-open for feature pulls.  Now a further 
year has gone by with that merge window open and shut and we are 
once again two releases away from seeing any possible inclusion.

On top of this, to this day I am yet to hear that the assignment 
papers have been completed by the original author, which would be 
a major blocker in itself.

Alarm bells should be ringing, but at times there seems to be an 
indifference from the core community on the matter, as if letting 
a valued D compiler coming up to 10 years of age go awry because 
of a lack of TLC is O.K.

Before this comes to sound like a death note, please be rest 
assured that my continued contribution shall remain, but some 
form of serious support really is needed to speed up process and 
development if we are even going to achieve any target we have 
set our sights on.

Lets discuss what we can positively do about the situation and 
start working together to a pillar goal in D's continued success. 
  Unless the more proactive thing to do would just be to walk 
in-front of that morning or afternoon bus instead of board it. :)

Regards,
Iain.
Jan 30 2014
next sibling parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv> writes:
Is there anything that a supporter can do if he is unable to 
spend time on direct contribution? :(
Jan 30 2014
next sibling parent Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw gdcproject.org> writes:
On 30 January 2014 12:38, Dicebot <public dicebot.lv> wrote:

 Is there anything that a supporter can do if he is unable to spend time on
 direct contribution? :(


If you have knowledge of the frontend, you can resolve implementation
issues that are known to break GDC/LDC.

ie: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/2200
Jan 30 2014
prev sibling parent Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw gdcproject.org> writes:
On 30 January 2014 19:06, Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw gdcproject.org> wrote:

 On 30 January 2014 12:38, Dicebot <public dicebot.lv> wrote:

 Is there anything that a supporter can do if he is unable to spend time on
 direct contribution? :(


 If you have knowledge of the frontend, you can resolve implementation
 issues that are known to break GDC/LDC.

 ie: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/2200


Oh, and there's the big list of differences between GDC and DMD frontends.

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/2194
Jan 30 2014
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 1/30/14 4:13 AM, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 Hi all,

 On March 22, 2014, GDC will turn 10! \o/

 This is a great landmark achievement in brevity for GDC, but we still
 haven't achieved in my personal opinion any levity of worthy note.  So
 much to the point I'm beginning to give doubt myself as to how long
 things can continue with a bus-factor of me.


Congratulations!


 Lets talk history.

 In late 2010, Digital Mars raised awareness with the FSF to start the
 process of merging GDC into GCC.  Nothing then happened until a year
 later when the copyright assignment/disclaimers had been completed by
 most parties.

 More silenced followed for a further year until the first set of patches
 were ready for submission, and over the year that followed resolving
 implementation issues, most were spent waiting for GCC development to
 re-open for feature pulls.  Now a further year has gone by with that
 merge window open and shut and we are once again two releases away from
 seeing any possible inclusion.


Sucks to be an evangelist, eh? :o) The thing is, most of the people in 
this forum are blissfully unaware of GNU's process, milestones, and 
deadlines. I know it's unpleasant to do so, but one thing to do would be 
to overcommunicate. There's a lot to be said about reminding people, 
time and again, about an impending deadline and what they can do to 
help. Messages in with titles like the samples below would make a world 
of difference:

[GDC] Four pulls up for review, aiming at GNU acceptance in three months
[GDC] Help needed: front-end pull, blocks GNU acceptance in two months
[GDC] URGENT: three weeks to GNU deadline, please review!
etc.

This kind of work is as important as the technical work you're doing 
(actually more important right now). It is true that more people would 
see others get the work done and they just download the GNU suite with 
GDC in it. But there's plenty of evidence there are many collaborators 
who are eager to help and simply don't have any information on what 
exactly which rocks to lift and where to take them. You need to be the 
guy coordinating that, and once per decade is not enough :o).


 On top of this, to this day I am yet to hear that the assignment papers
 have been completed by the original author, which would be a major
 blocker in itself.


Who's that guy and what code did he write? If no response, let's redo 
his work. We should not be afraid of it.


 Alarm bells should be ringing, but at times there seems to be an
 indifference from the core community on the matter, as if letting a
 valued D compiler coming up to 10 years of age go awry because of a lack
 of TLC is O.K.


(TLC = tender loving care?)

An increasing number of people depend on GDC for getting work done. 
Including a couple of projects here at Facebook. Yet the simple reality 
is that even if I summoned TODAY one of our engineers with "get on 
helping gdc full time", that engineer would have absolutely no idea 
where to start.


 Before this comes to sound like a death note, please be rest assured
 that my continued contribution shall remain, but some form of serious
 support really is needed to speed up process and development if we are
 even going to achieve any target we have set our sights on.

 Lets discuss what we can positively do about the situation and start
 working together to a pillar goal in D's continued success.  Unless the
 more proactive thing to do would just be to walk in-front of that
 morning or afternoon bus instead of board it. :)


Absolutely! And your note is a great breaker of the thundering silence 
around working together to get gdc where it belongs.

That being a large endeavor, there's one time-honored way to address it: 
divide it into smaller steps. So here are a few thoughts:

* Use this forum for EVERYTHING related to gdc, EXCLUSIVELY. Prefix 
everything with [gdc] so nobody will complain about being spammed.

* Keep people posted about ALL upcoming milestones and deadlines of the 
relevant gnu process.

* Find the SMALLEST indivisible step that would help push gdc toward 
integration, file it under bugzilla, and tag it with "gdc". Repeat this 
many times.

* Ask the community for help NOT on a large matter. Ask for help for 
EACH SMALL STEP that a competent person can get on to. I bet many in 
this community read your anniversary message and were like, "wow, 
tricky..." and back to browsing. I take it 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/2200 and 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/2194 are two 
important ones, is that correct?

I'll do my best on my side to help with very concrete bits, i.e. put 
bounties on important issues or have legal contact people for 
signatures. But I need to know!


Andrei
Jan 30 2014
next sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 1/30/2014 5:39 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 1/30/14 4:13 AM, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 On March 22, 2014, GDC will turn 10! \o/


 Congratulations!


Yes, well done!


 The thing is, most of the people in this
 forum are blissfully unaware of GNU's process, milestones, and deadlines. I
know
 it's unpleasant to do so, but one thing to do would be to overcommunicate.
 There's a lot to be said about reminding people, time and again, about an
 impending deadline and what they can do to help.


I totally agree. The "build it and they will come" is a hollywood myth, you've 
got to get out in front of this and flog it.

Over the years, I've seen an awful lot of great projects created by brilliant 
people fall by the wayside because the creator, for whatever reason, did not 
flog it. This has often, sadly, left the creator frustrated and even bitter.

For example, OSCON is still open (until midnight) for speaking proposals.
Submit 
a proposal about GDC!

http://www.oscon.com/oscon2014

See the yellow button? SUBMIT! (I did already, so has Andrei.) Don't pass up 
opportunities, or assume someone else will do it on your behalf.

It's not the time to be modest!
Jan 30 2014
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On 1/31/14, Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:

 * Ask the community for help NOT on a large matter.


The way I see it both the GDC and LDC projects suffer from a difficult
barrier to entry for anyone new to the compilers. For example, to
build either of the compilers you need to go through a massive list of
things that you have to do **manually**:

http://wiki.dlang.org/GDC/Installation/Generic
http://wiki.dlang.org/Building_LDC_from_source

And those are Posix instructions. Windows instructions are typically
out of date, randomly break, have never been tested, missing crucial
info, etc etc. It's always a nightmare to build the damn thing.

Why aren't there simple scripts that can auto-build the compilers from
start to finish, including fetching the dependencies? For example,
someone made a script that makes building MinGW on Windows really
easy:

https://github.com/niXman/mingw-builds

You can build multiple versions of MinGW, and it actually works, and
its all automated.

Meanwhile to build DMD all it takes is make -f <your_platform>.mak. If
DMD wasn't so easy to build *I would have never contributed to it*.
But GDC and LDC have a huge barrier to entry, I honestly can't be
bothered to waste yet another afternoon following someone's latest
wiki entry on how to build their project, which typically fails in
some step N in the instructions.
Jan 31 2014
next sibling parent "Dejan Lekic" <dejan.lekic gmail.com> writes:
Long ago I had a shell script that cross-compiles GCC with 
included GDC for Windows (MinGW).

Meanwhile so many MinGW based projects appeared and I had 
impression that one of them has GDC bundled. Am I wrong?

Building everything should not be _that_ difficult I believe.
Jan 31 2014
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Craig Dillabaugh" <cdillaba cg.scs.carleton.ca> writes:
On Friday, 31 January 2014 at 15:17:13 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

 On 1/31/14, Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> 
 wrote:

 * Ask the community for help NOT on a large matter.


 The way I see it both the GDC and LDC projects suffer from a 
 difficult
 barrier to entry for anyone new to the compilers. For example, 
 to
 build either of the compilers you need to go through a massive 
 list of
 things that you have to do **manually**:

 http://wiki.dlang.org/GDC/Installation/Generic
 http://wiki.dlang.org/Building_LDC_from_source


I am going to hazard a guess that you are not an Arch Linux fan 
:o)
Jan 31 2014
parent reply Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On 1/31/14, Craig Dillabaugh <cdillaba cg.scs.carleton.ca> wrote:

 I am going to hazard a guess that you are not an Arch Linux fan


I like configurability, a lot, but when I want to contribute to
something I may not be interested in all the interesting choices I'm
forced to make beforehand. I just want to get from point A to point Z.

I like to think there should be a sensible default to software
configuration, which I can *later* configure to my liking.
Jan 31 2014
parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv> writes:
On Friday, 31 January 2014 at 17:28:41 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

 On 1/31/14, Craig Dillabaugh <cdillaba cg.scs.carleton.ca> 
 wrote:

 I am going to hazard a guess that you are not an Arch Linux fan


 I like configurability, a lot, but when I want to contribute to
 something I may not be interested in all the interesting 
 choices I'm
 forced to make beforehand. I just want to get from point A to 
 point Z.

 I like to think there should be a sensible default to software
 configuration, which I can *later* configure to my liking.


I think he may have meant that as Arch Linux has gdc package
available, such simple script exists - it is a package build
script which is publicly available. But it is for 4.8 gcc branch
so does not really help much :(
Jan 31 2014
parent reply Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On 1/31/14, Dicebot <public dicebot.lv> wrote:

 I think he may have meant that as Arch Linux has gdc package
 available, such simple script exists - it is a package build
 script which is publicly available. But it is for 4.8 gcc branch
 so does not really help much :(


Right, I need something to build the source with after I modify the
source. Git-head, and all that. Prebuilt binaries are of no use. :)
Jan 31 2014
next sibling parent reply "Craig Dillabaugh" <craig.dillabaugh gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 31 January 2014 at 19:43:22 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

 On 1/31/14, Dicebot <public dicebot.lv> wrote:

 I think he may have meant that as Arch Linux has gdc package
 available, such simple script exists - it is a package build
 script which is publicly available. But it is for 4.8 gcc 
 branch
 so does not really help much :(


 Right, I need something to build the source with after I modify 
 the
 source. Git-head, and all that. Prebuilt binaries are of no 
 use. :)


Sadly, it was the former.  Based on all the rave reviews on the 
"Best Linux" thread I tried to install Arch on a VirtualBox VM 
yesterday.  I spent 2.5 hours carefully reading (and following I 
believed) the installation instructions, only to end up with an 
unbootable VM.  It wasn't wasted time though really, because I 
learned some new things that I never would have picked up with a 
graphical install. However, I could see that someone who didn't 
want to learn the installation details would have gone crazy.

After that I installed Mint on another VM, in about 5 minutes. It 
booted with no troubles.
Jan 31 2014
parent Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On 1/31/14, Craig Dillabaugh <craig.dillabaugh gmail.com> wrote:

 After that I installed Mint on another VM, in about 5 minutes. It
 booted with no troubles.


This is getting OT, but Manjaro worked for me, which is Arch Based.
Unlike Arch it has a GUI installer which is really simple to use, and
it installed in a few minutes. D-related packages seem to work and
they show up in the package manager even though Manjaro apparently
uses its own packaging system (P.S. most D projects seem to be
packaged by Dicebot).
Jan 31 2014
prev sibling parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv> writes:
On Friday, 31 January 2014 at 19:43:22 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

 Right, I need something to build the source with after I modify 
 the
 source. Git-head, and all that. Prebuilt binaries are of no 
 use. :)


No, I did not mean to _use_ prebuilt binaries. For any Arch Linux 
(and thus Manjaro) package there is a matching entry in SVN 
repository with build script. For example, for GDC it is here: 
https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/tree/trunk?h=packages/gdc

There is also AUR package for gcc 4.9 - 
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gd/gdc-git/PKGBUILD , 
maintained by Moritz Maxeiner

At any time you can just download those, make any changes you 
need and run `makepkg`. Or just use build() function from 
PKGBUILD as a base for your own build script.
Jan 31 2014
next sibling parent reply Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On 1/31/14, Dicebot <public dicebot.lv> wrote:

 At any time you can just download those, make any changes you
 need and run `makepkg`. Or just use build() function from
 PKGBUILD as a base for your own build script.


This is great, I could start hacking on GDC then. Perfect, thanks!
Jan 31 2014
parent reply "ed" <growlercab gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 31 January 2014 at 21:56:16 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

 On 1/31/14, Dicebot <public dicebot.lv> wrote:

 At any time you can just download those, make any changes you
 need and run `makepkg`. Or just use build() function from
 PKGBUILD as a base for your own build script.


 This is great, I could start hacking on GDC then. Perfect, 
 thanks!


+1. This is fantastic, I can now quickly start hacking about in 
GDC and learn the ropes. Hopefully I can contribute something 
back sooner rather than later.

Cheers,
ed
Jan 31 2014
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 1/31/14, 3:10 PM, ed wrote:

 On Friday, 31 January 2014 at 21:56:16 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

 On 1/31/14, Dicebot <public dicebot.lv> wrote:

 At any time you can just download those, make any changes you
 need and run `makepkg`. Or just use build() function from
 PKGBUILD as a base for your own build script.


 This is great, I could start hacking on GDC then. Perfect, thanks!


 +1. This is fantastic, I can now quickly start hacking about in GDC and
 learn the ropes. Hopefully I can contribute something back sooner rather
 than later.


This information should go in a prominent place on the gdc website or 
wiki. Iain?

Andrei
Feb 01 2014
next sibling parent reply "Andrej Mitrovic" <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 1 February 2014 at 16:20:33 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 This information should go in a prominent place on the gdc 
 website or wiki. Iain?


It seems some of my posts from gmail didn't go through to the 
forums, argh. Anyway, I've added this instruction:

http://wiki.dlang.org/GDC/Installation#Arch_Linux_.28also_Manjaro_Linux.29
Feb 01 2014
parent "Iain Buclaw" <ibuclaw gdcproject.org> writes:
On Saturday, 1 February 2014 at 16:37:33 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic 
wrote:

 On Saturday, 1 February 2014 at 16:20:33 UTC, Andrei 
 Alexandrescu wrote:

 This information should go in a prominent place on the gdc 
 website or wiki. Iain?


 It seems some of my posts from gmail didn't go through to the 
 forums, argh.


Likewise, I haven't received any mail since 9.40am this morning. 
Someone poke Brad. :-)
Feb 01 2014
prev sibling parent "Iain Buclaw" <ibuclaw gdcproject.org> writes:
On Saturday, 1 February 2014 at 16:20:33 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 On 1/31/14, 3:10 PM, ed wrote:

 On Friday, 31 January 2014 at 21:56:16 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic 
 wrote:

 On 1/31/14, Dicebot <public dicebot.lv> wrote:

 At any time you can just download those, make any changes you
 need and run `makepkg`. Or just use build() function from
 PKGBUILD as a base for your own build script.


 This is great, I could start hacking on GDC then. Perfect, 
 thanks!


 +1. This is fantastic, I can now quickly start hacking about 
 in GDC and
 learn the ropes. Hopefully I can contribute something back 
 sooner rather
 than later.


 This information should go in a prominent place on the gdc 
 website or wiki. Iain?


Both.  I want to build up the website to have at least the core 
set of information readily available (via more clickable menus on 
the top).
Feb 01 2014
prev sibling parent reply Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On 1/31/14, Dicebot <public dicebot.lv> wrote:

 For any Arch Linux
 (and thus Manjaro) package there is a matching entry in SVN
 repository with build script.


Thanks again, I'm building it right now. So far everything seems to
work ok. I've added your instructions to the wiki:

http://wiki.dlang.org/GDC/Installation#Arch_Linux_.28also_Manjaro_Linux.29
Feb 01 2014
parent "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv> writes:
On Saturday, 1 February 2014 at 18:54:53 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic 
wrote:

 On 1/31/14, Dicebot <public dicebot.lv> wrote:

 For any Arch Linux
 (and thus Manjaro) package there is a matching entry in SVN
 repository with build script.


 Thanks again, I'm building it right now. So far everything 
 seems to
 work ok. I've added your instructions to the wiki:

 http://wiki.dlang.org/GDC/Installation#Arch_Linux_.28also_Manjaro_Linux.29


Please note that, as far as I am aware, GDC development is done 
in master (4.9) branch and only occasionally merged into 4.8 
branch. So if you want to actually contribute something, gdc-git 
from AUR should be of more interest.
Feb 01 2014
prev sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 1/31/14, 7:16 AM, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

 On 1/31/14, Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:

 * Ask the community for help NOT on a large matter.


 The way I see it both the GDC and LDC projects suffer from a difficult
 barrier to entry for anyone new to the compilers. For example, to
 build either of the compilers you need to go through a massive list of
 things that you have to do **manually**:

 http://wiki.dlang.org/GDC/Installation/Generic
 http://wiki.dlang.org/Building_LDC_from_source

 And those are Posix instructions. Windows instructions are typically
 out of date, randomly break, have never been tested, missing crucial
 info, etc etc. It's always a nightmare to build the damn thing.

 Why aren't there simple scripts that can auto-build the compilers from
 start to finish, including fetching the dependencies?


[snip]

This is very interesting observation, and an obvious area of 
improvement. Andrej, could you please file two issues under bugzilla 
with the respective tags ldc and gdc? I'll see if I can place bounties 
on them.


Andrei
Jan 31 2014
parent reply Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On 1/31/14, Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:

 Andrej, could you please file two issues under bugzilla
 with the respective tags ldc and gdc? I'll see if I can place bounties
 on them.


That's a great idea! Here we go:

https://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=12048
https://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=12049
Jan 31 2014
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 1/31/14, 9:40 AM, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

 On 1/31/14, Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:

 Andrej, could you please file two issues under bugzilla
 with the respective tags ldc and gdc? I'll see if I can place bounties
 on them.


 That's a great idea! Here we go:

 https://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=12048
 https://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=12049


Added the LDC keywords (GDC already existed) and assigned it to 12048.

Andrei
Jan 31 2014
prev sibling parent reply Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw gdcproject.org> writes:
On 31 January 2014 01:39, Andrei Alexandrescu
<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:

 On 1/30/14 4:13 AM, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 Hi all,

 On March 22, 2014, GDC will turn 10! \o/

 This is a great landmark achievement in brevity for GDC, but we still
 haven't achieved in my personal opinion any levity of worthy note.  So
 much to the point I'm beginning to give doubt myself as to how long
 things can continue with a bus-factor of me.



 Congratulations!



 Lets talk history.

 In late 2010, Digital Mars raised awareness with the FSF to start the
 process of merging GDC into GCC.  Nothing then happened until a year
 later when the copyright assignment/disclaimers had been completed by
 most parties.

 More silenced followed for a further year until the first set of patches
 were ready for submission, and over the year that followed resolving
 implementation issues, most were spent waiting for GCC development to
 re-open for feature pulls.  Now a further year has gone by with that
 merge window open and shut and we are once again two releases away from
 seeing any possible inclusion.



 Sucks to be an evangelist, eh? :o) The thing is, most of the people in this
 forum are blissfully unaware of GNU's process, milestones, and deadlines. I
 know it's unpleasant to do so, but one thing to do would be to
 overcommunicate. There's a lot to be said about reminding people, time and
 again, about an impending deadline and what they can do to help. Messages in
 with titles like the samples below would make a world of difference:

 [GDC] Four pulls up for review, aiming at GNU acceptance in three months
 [GDC] Help needed: front-end pull, blocks GNU acceptance in two months
 [GDC] URGENT: three weeks to GNU deadline, please review!
 etc.

 This kind of work is as important as the technical work you're doing
 (actually more important right now). It is true that more people would see
 others get the work done and they just download the GNU suite with GDC in
 it. But there's plenty of evidence there are many collaborators who are
 eager to help and simply don't have any information on what exactly which
 rocks to lift and where to take them. You need to be the guy coordinating
 that, and once per decade is not enough :o).





 On top of this, to this day I am yet to hear that the assignment papers
 have been completed by the original author, which would be a major
 blocker in itself.



 Who's that guy and what code did he write? If no response, let's redo his
 work. We should not be afraid of it.


David Friedman, I'm in direct contact with him and give both him and
Donald (the FSF assignments clerk) a nudge over the issue once every
couple of months.  Whilst David has no problem, he is in the
unfortunate position of having his IP owned by a company.  And at last
check, they were still dealing with clauses in the assignment.

As for the codebase, I can say that around 60% has been potentially
re-written since I picked it up in 2008/2009.



 Alarm bells should be ringing, but at times there seems to be an
 indifference from the core community on the matter, as if letting a
 valued D compiler coming up to 10 years of age go awry because of a lack
 of TLC is O.K.



 (TLC = tender loving care?)

 An increasing number of people depend on GDC for getting work done.
 Including a couple of projects here at Facebook. Yet the simple reality is
 that even if I summoned TODAY one of our engineers with "get on helping gdc
 full time", that engineer would have absolutely no idea where to start.


The same could be said with DMD.  I'd never expect someone to pick up
a 20k codebase in a week, but one can do it in small steps.  In my
opinion, the best way to get stuck into GDC is to do a couple of
frontend merges (2.064 -> 2.065 -> future).



 Before this comes to sound like a death note, please be rest assured
 that my continued contribution shall remain, but some form of serious
 support really is needed to speed up process and development if we are
 even going to achieve any target we have set our sights on.

 Lets discuss what we can positively do about the situation and start
 working together to a pillar goal in D's continued success.  Unless the
 more proactive thing to do would just be to walk in-front of that
 morning or afternoon bus instead of board it. :)



 Absolutely! And your note is a great breaker of the thundering silence
 around working together to get gdc where it belongs.

 That being a large endeavor, there's one time-honored way to address it:
 divide it into smaller steps. So here are a few thoughts:

 * Use this forum for EVERYTHING related to gdc, EXCLUSIVELY. Prefix
 everything with [gdc] so nobody will complain about being spammed.

 * Keep people posted about ALL upcoming milestones and deadlines of the
 relevant gnu process.

 * Find the SMALLEST indivisible step that would help push gdc toward
 integration, file it under bugzilla, and tag it with "gdc". Repeat this many
 times.

 * Ask the community for help NOT on a large matter. Ask for help for EACH
 SMALL STEP that a competent person can get on to. I bet many in this
 community read your anniversary message and were like, "wow, tricky..." and
 back to browsing. I take it
 https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/2200 and
 https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/2194 are two important
 ones, is that correct?


Differences between gdc and dmd in the frontend implement are important.

GCC has a strict backend and will ICE at any opportunity it can find.
As GDC has been well tailored to this over the years to produce
correct code for GCC.  Things like this in GCC can flag up any big
problems in the frontend quite easily.  Regardless of whether or not
DMD compiles it without a hitch.

Having arbitrary changes to the frontend means that not just anyone
can pick up the latest version of D and slot it in.  Internal
knowledge of what changes are present in that patch, and why in my
head after months of study and testing.  It makes merges more
difficult, setting aside changes in the frontend have a hidden
knock-on effect in the glue.


 I'll do my best on my side to help with very concrete bits, i.e. put
 bounties on important issues or have legal contact people for signatures.
 But I need to know!


If you can get me in touch with your guy, I could do with a hand in
having a third party look over my own code reviews, which doesn't
require any previous knowledge of gdc.

http://gcc.gnu.org/codingconventions.html
Jan 31 2014
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 1/31/14, 12:44 PM, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 On 31 January 2014 01:39, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:

 Who's that guy and what code did he write? If no response, let's redo his
 work. We should not be afraid of it.


 David Friedman, I'm in direct contact with him and give both him and
 Donald (the FSF assignments clerk) a nudge over the issue once every
 couple of months.  Whilst David has no problem, he is in the
 unfortunate position of having his IP owned by a company.  And at last
 check, they were still dealing with clauses in the assignment.

 As for the codebase, I can say that around 60% has been potentially
 re-written since I picked it up in 2008/2009.


OK, we need to push this forward. If you think I could help, please send 
me his contact information. If you think the situation has reached an 
impasse, I'd say taskify (sic!) the code to be replaced and let's just 
rewrite it. It's all public and visible so the differences will be obvious.


 An increasing number of people depend on GDC for getting work done.
 Including a couple of projects here at Facebook. Yet the simple reality is
 that even if I summoned TODAY one of our engineers with "get on helping gdc
 full time", that engineer would have absolutely no idea where to start.


 The same could be said with DMD.  I'd never expect someone to pick up
 a 20k codebase in a week, but one can do it in small steps.  In my
 opinion, the best way to get stuck into GDC is to do a couple of
 frontend merges (2.064 -> 2.065 -> future).


Here's where I think in fact DMD and GDC are very different and could 
use a lot more alignment. There are literally thousands of mini-tasks 
for dmd, druntime, etc. documented on bugzilla. Contributors have 
invariably started by fixing something in bugzilla that they wished done 
and figured it can't be too complicated.

Think of it this way: where would be DMD right now if instead of 
bugzilla we'd have a private list maintained by Walter? That's the 
situation GDC is in.

Bugzilla, bugzilla, bugzilla. Know what I'm sayin'?


 Differences between gdc and dmd in the frontend implement are important.

 GCC has a strict backend and will ICE at any opportunity it can find.
 As GDC has been well tailored to this over the years to produce
 correct code for GCC.  Things like this in GCC can flag up any big
 problems in the frontend quite easily.  Regardless of whether or not
 DMD compiles it without a hitch.

 Having arbitrary changes to the frontend means that not just anyone
 can pick up the latest version of D and slot it in.  Internal
 knowledge of what changes are present in that patch, and why in my
 head after months of study and testing.  It makes merges more
 difficult, setting aside changes in the frontend have a hidden
 knock-on effect in the glue.


I see. The way I'm thinking of this is we can improve the front-end to 
make things easier for you and LDC. Again this takes figuring out what 
discernible steps could be taken and documenting them under bugzilla.


 I'll do my best on my side to help with very concrete bits, i.e. put
 bounties on important issues or have legal contact people for signatures.
 But I need to know!


 If you can get me in touch with your guy, I could do with a hand in
 having a third party look over my own code reviews, which doesn't
 require any previous knowledge of gdc.

 http://gcc.gnu.org/codingconventions.html


Done. Check your inbox.


Andrei
Jan 31 2014
prev sibling parent "Dejan Lekic" <dejan.lekic gmail.com> writes:
All I can say is this: GDC for me as a D developer, is 
invaluable. Yes I use DMD and LDC, but GCC is something I have on 
all machines by default. I can't wait for GDC to be inside the 
GCC source tree. THAT is going to be a historical moment for D 
community.

Keep up with the good work!
Jan 31 2014