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digitalmars.D - SDC needs you

reply "deadalnix" <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
OK, do not expect SDC to compile your code yet, but it got to a 
point where the base is fairly stable, and thing can get better. 
I compiled a list of high impact items, ranging from relatively 
easy bug fixes, to compiler guru level.

https://github.com/deadalnix/SDC/wiki/TODO-list

If some of you want to contribute, that'd be awesome. SDC can 
happen, and you can be a part of this, so go cloning the repo now 
:)
Apr 15 2015
parent reply "Joakim" <dlang joakim.fea.st> writes:
On Wednesday, 15 April 2015 at 08:13:20 UTC, deadalnix wrote:

 OK, do not expect SDC to compile your code yet, but it got to a 
 point where the base is fairly stable, and thing can get 
 better. I compiled a list of high impact items, ranging from 
 relatively easy bug fixes, to compiler guru level.

 https://github.com/deadalnix/SDC/wiki/TODO-list

 If some of you want to contribute, that'd be awesome. SDC can 
 happen, and you can be a part of this, so go cloning the repo 
 now :)


That's a nice list to get more people involved.  I've been
calling for Andrei/Walter to put up a similar list on the D wiki,
with specific issues they think need dealing with or that would
be pre-approved.
Apr 15 2015
next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 4/15/15 8:42 PM, Joakim wrote:

 On Wednesday, 15 April 2015 at 08:13:20 UTC, deadalnix wrote:

 OK, do not expect SDC to compile your code yet, but it got to a point
 where the base is fairly stable, and thing can get better. I compiled
 a list of high impact items, ranging from relatively easy bug fixes,
 to compiler guru level.

 https://github.com/deadalnix/SDC/wiki/TODO-list

 If some of you want to contribute, that'd be awesome. SDC can happen,
 and you can be a part of this, so go cloning the repo now :)


 That's a nice list to get more people involved.  I've been
 calling for Andrei/Walter to put up a similar list on the D wiki,
 with specific issues they think need dealing with or that would
 be pre-approved.


Forgive my being skeptical but my repeated appeals to contributions - 
most of them important, urgent, and of high impact - sometimes labeled 
with [WORK] in this forum, have been answered by the same very small 
kernel of contributors (including Walter and myself), regardless of 
their difficulty (sometimes trivial). Lists, labels, management 
techniques that are touted in this forum every few months or so - no 
avail. The vision document that everybody asked about? Read and 
dutifully ignored - back to the next naming debate. The sad reality is 
that if one of about a handful of core folks doesn't do it, it won't get 
done. My resolution is to do more of everything; that way more of 
everything will get done. -- Andrei
Apr 15 2015
next sibling parent reply "H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d" <digitalmars-d puremagic.com> writes:
On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 09:05:18PM -0700, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d
wrote:
[...]

 Forgive my being skeptical but my repeated appeals to contributions -
 most of them important, urgent, and of high impact - sometimes labeled
 with [WORK] in this forum, have been answered by the same very small
 kernel of contributors (including Walter and myself), regardless of
 their difficulty (sometimes trivial). Lists, labels, management
 techniques that are touted in this forum every few months or so - no
 avail. The vision document that everybody asked about? Read and
 dutifully ignored - back to the next naming debate. The sad reality is
 that if one of about a handful of core folks doesn't do it, it won't
 get done. My resolution is to do more of everything; that way more of
 everything will get done. -- Andrei


This is why I've reduced my participation in forum threads... It's much
more productive to submit PRs than to engage in endless debates that, at
the end of the day, don't have very much to show for the amount of
energy expended in the discussion. Well, lately I've also been busy with
other stuff, so I haven't been that active on github either, but
hopefully I'll get back to it someday.


T

-- 
People walk. Computers run.
Apr 15 2015
parent "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv> writes:
On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 05:01:16 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 This is why I've reduced my participation in forum threads... 
 It's much
 more productive to submit PRs than to engage in endless debates 
 that, at
 the end of the day, don't have very much to show for the amount 
 of
 energy expended in the discussion.


I was about to joke how quickly this thread is going to degrade 
into another meaningless debate that has nothing to do with 
original post but looks like I am already too late.
Apr 16 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Joakim" <dlang joakim.fea.st> writes:
On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 04:05:19 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 Forgive my being skeptical but my repeated appeals to 
 contributions - most of them important, urgent, and of high 
 impact - sometimes labeled with [WORK] in this forum, have been 
 answered by the same very small kernel of contributors 
 (including Walter and myself), regardless of their difficulty 
 (sometimes trivial). Lists, labels, management techniques that 
 are touted in this forum every few months or so - no avail. The 
 vision document that everybody asked about? Read and dutifully 
 ignored - back to the next naming debate. The sad reality is 
 that if one of about a handful of core folks doesn't do it, it 
 won't get done. My resolution is to do more of everything; that 
 way more of everything will get done. -- Andrei


I understand that it's frustrating to get stuff done on a 
decentralized open source project, but you have to help 
contributors a bit in order for them to help you.  Your [WORK] 
appeals have been a great step- I had one of them open in my 
browser to remind me to get to it, but Walter beat me to it- but 
the forum is not easy to keep track of and navigate for newbies.  
How much harder would it be for you to stick all those in a 
single wiki page, to make it easier for noobs to find and easy 
for us to point them at?  That's all I'm asking for.  As far as I 
can tell, lists and bugzilla labels have not actually been tried 
yet, so you cannot dismiss them so easily.

As for the vision document, it was definitely a step in the right 
direction, so that the community is clear on the vision of the 
BDFLs, but it was a little less concrete than I would have liked. 
  Back it up with some concrete lists of issues for each vision 
item and it would go a lot further, for example, what are the 
five bugzilla issues that would most help improve quality of 
implementation?  Without listing those, it's just airy talk, 
missing specific steps you'd like to see taken.

Of course, you can go to all the trouble of coming up with a list 
of action items and nobody outside the core group may still 
contribute, as I said from the beginning.  But if you don't make 
it easier for new or non-core contributors, you just lowered the 
odds of them pitching in from 7% to 1%.  All we're trying to do 
is raise those odds, and I don't think a list will take you or 
Walter much time, just like this one deadalnix put up.
Apr 15 2015
next sibling parent "deadalnix" <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 05:07:57 UTC, Joakim wrote:

 Of course, you can go to all the trouble of coming up with a 
 list of action items and nobody outside the core group may 
 still contribute, as I said from the beginning.  But if you 
 don't make it easier for new or non-core contributors, you just 
 lowered the odds of them pitching in from 7% to 1%.  All we're 
 trying to do is raise those odds, and I don't think a list will 
 take you or Walter much time, just like this one deadalnix put 
 up.


It is not absurd, but the time I spent on this could have been 
spent on solving one of the point. Let's see how it turns out. If 
nobody picks anything, then it wouldn't have been a good use of 
my time, but I won't know without trying.
Apr 15 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 4/15/15 10:07 PM, Joakim wrote:

 I understand that it's frustrating to get stuff done on a decentralized
 open source project, but you have to help contributors a bit in order
 for them to help you.  Your [WORK] appeals have been a great step- I had
 one of them open in my browser to remind me to get to it, but Walter
 beat me to it- but the forum is not easy to keep track of and navigate
 for newbies. How much harder would it be for you to stick all those in a
 single wiki page, to make it easier for noobs to find and easy for us to
 point them at?  That's all I'm asking for.  As far as I can tell, lists
 and bugzilla labels have not actually been tried yet, so you cannot
 dismiss them so easily.

 As for the vision document, it was definitely a step in the right
 direction, so that the community is clear on the vision of the BDFLs,
 but it was a little less concrete than I would have liked.  Back it up
 with some concrete lists of issues for each vision item and it would go
 a lot further, for example, what are the five bugzilla issues that would
 most help improve quality of implementation?  Without listing those,
 it's just airy talk, missing specific steps you'd like to see taken.

 Of course, you can go to all the trouble of coming up with a list of
 action items and nobody outside the core group may still contribute, as
 I said from the beginning.  But if you don't make it easier for new or
 non-core contributors, you just lowered the odds of them pitching in
 from 7% to 1%.  All we're trying to do is raise those odds, and I don't
 think a list will take you or Walter much time, just like this one
 deadalnix put up.


This is good stuff. FWIW we do have a keyword "preapproved" on bugzilla:

https://issues.dlang.org/buglist.cgi?f1=keywords&list_id=200200&o1=equals&query_format=advanced&resolution=---&v1=preapproved

It has 23 items of various ages. I didn't notice the presence of the 
keyword helping in any way. So spending time annotating issues with 
"preapproved" is possibly a waste of time. I suspect maintaining lists 
of stuff to do is also low-impact.

Yeah, we know what to do. A ton of it is easy to derive directly from 
the vision, do I need to provide the food already chewed? Eliminate 
gratuitous garbage from Phobos, create good unique and reference counted 
types (and see if we need something beside DIP25 to make them safe), 
improve associative arrays (apparently there's no reasonable way to free 
an AA manually...), documentation, documentation, documentation... 
there's a bunch of stuff to do all over the difficulty spectrum. It's 
painfully trivial to find easy and high impact stuff to work on. That's 
not low-hanging fruit, it's fruit that falls into one's lap.

Now that I got started, there are two more topics that I think we could 
do a lot better at:

1. Challenging Walter on anything and everything seems to have become a 
rite of passage in our community. Some of the reviews of his code are 
the most petty and meaningless I've seen in my career, bar none. It 
doesn't help that he doesn't budge on some of the petty issues, thus a 
vicious circle gets created. In a recent review, after his code had been 
pecked within an inch of its death, it took me minutes to find two bugs 
that nobody had the eyes for in spite of every token of his code having 
been scrutinized.

2. Turning the hay over and over and over again. I've mentioned this 
before - there's just an astounding amount of tweaking and shuffling and 
moving around code that works well under serious-sounding pretexts such 
as "refactoring" and "maintenance". Sometimes really difficult stuff, 
too. A lot of it is low-impact work that makes Phobos' codebase look 
horribly overcooked. There's been more than one instance when I 
revisited some file I knew most of the code of. Elegant solutions. 
Nimble code. Just to find it mutated into the stuff of Agent Smith's 
world. One horrible contraption layered on top of another to the extent 
it's difficult to find where work is being done.

There is a way out of this, and that for us all to give good examples 
that demonstrate what good contributions are and what good reviews are.


Andrei
Apr 15 2015
next sibling parent reply Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2015-04-16 08:02, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:


 This is good stuff. FWIW we do have a keyword "preapproved" on bugzilla:

 https://issues.dlang.org/buglist.cgi?f1=keywords&list_id=200200&o1=equals&query_format=advanced&resolution=---&v1=preapproved


 It has 23 items of various ages. I didn't notice the presence of the
 keyword helping in any way. So spending time annotating issues with
 "preapproved" is possibly a waste of time. I suspect maintaining lists
 of stuff to do is also low-impact.


I've been working on the Objective-C support for quite a while. I'm on 
my third rewrite due to comments in previous pull requests. The latest 
pull request [1] was created in January, it's basically been stalled 
since February due to lack of review and Walter has not made a single 
comment at all in this pull request.

I did the rewrites to comply with the requests Walter made in previous 
pull requests. Although not present as a bugzilla issue with the 
"preapproved" tag, I did interpreted it as preapproved based on a forum 
post made by you [2].

I know that focus has shifted to GC, reference counting, C++ and so on, 
but you're not making it easy for someone to contribute.

[1] https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/4321
[2] http://forum.dlang.org/post/lfoe82$17c0$1 digitalmars.com

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Apr 15 2015
parent reply Michel Fortin <michel.fortin michelf.ca> writes:
On 2015-04-16 06:50:35 +0000, Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> said:


 I've been working on the Objective-C support for quite a while. I'm on 
 my third rewrite due to comments in previous pull requests. The latest 
 pull request [1] was created in January, it's basically been stalled 
 since February due to lack of review and Walter has not made a single 
 comment at all in this pull request.
 
 I did the rewrites to comply with the requests Walter made in previous 
 pull requests. Although not present as a bugzilla issue with the 
 "preapproved" tag, I did interpreted it as preapproved based on a forum 
 post made by you [2].
 
 I know that focus has shifted to GC, reference counting, C++ and so on, 
 but you're not making it easy for someone to contribute.
 
 [1] https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/4321
 [2] http://forum.dlang.org/post/lfoe82$17c0$1 digitalmars.com


Back at the time I was working on D/Objective-C, my separate work on a 

treatment: no comment from Walter in months. It's time-consuming to 
maintain a complex pull request against a changing master branch, and 
it was abandoned at some point because I got tired of maintaining it 
with no review in sight.

Using Github was a new thing back then, so I didn't necessarily expect 

no comment at all made me rethink things. It made me dread a similar 
fate would await D/Objective-C. It was one of the reasons I stopped 
working on it. Now that Jacob has taken over the Herculean task of 
making it work with current DMD after a few years of falling behind and 
of refactoring it as a series of pull requests by sub-feature to make 
it easier to review, I fear more and more it'll get the same treatment 

and then abandoned (when Jacob patience and/or spare time runs out).

It would be sad to see all those efforts wasted.

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin michelf.ca
http://michelf.ca
Apr 16 2015
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 4/16/2015 10:47 AM, Michel Fortin wrote:

 On 2015-04-16 06:50:35 +0000, Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> said:


 I've been working on the Objective-C support for quite a while. I'm on my
 third rewrite due to comments in previous pull requests. The latest pull
 request [1] was created in January, it's basically been stalled since February
 due to lack of review and Walter has not made a single comment at all in this
 pull request.

 I did the rewrites to comply with the requests Walter made in previous pull
 requests. Although not present as a bugzilla issue with the "preapproved" tag,
 I did interpreted it as preapproved based on a forum post made by you [2].

 I know that focus has shifted to GC, reference counting, C++ and so on, but
 you're not making it easy for someone to contribute.

 [1] https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/4321
 [2] http://forum.dlang.org/post/lfoe82$17c0$1 digitalmars.com


 Back at the time I was working on D/Objective-C, my separate work on a feature

 comment from Walter in months. It's time-consuming to maintain a complex pull
 request against a changing master branch, and it was abandoned at some point
 because I got tired of maintaining it with no review in sight.

 Using Github was a new thing back then, so I didn't necessarily expect the

at
 all made me rethink things. It made me dread a similar fate would await
 D/Objective-C. It was one of the reasons I stopped working on it. Now that
Jacob
 has taken over the Herculean task of making it work with current DMD after a
few
 years of falling behind and of refactoring it as a series of pull requests by
 sub-feature to make it easier to review, I fear more and more it'll get the
same

 and then abandoned (when Jacob patience and/or spare time runs out).

 It would be sad to see all those efforts wasted.


Yes it would. The problem is I have a hard time reviewing complex things I
don't 
understand, so I procrastinate. The fault is mine, not with your work.
Apr 16 2015
next sibling parent reply Rikki Cattermole <alphaglosined gmail.com> writes:
On 17/04/2015 2:19 p.m., Walter Bright wrote:

 On 4/16/2015 10:47 AM, Michel Fortin wrote:

 On 2015-04-16 06:50:35 +0000, Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> said:


 I've been working on the Objective-C support for quite a while. I'm
 on my
 third rewrite due to comments in previous pull requests. The latest pull
 request [1] was created in January, it's basically been stalled since
 February
 due to lack of review and Walter has not made a single comment at all
 in this
 pull request.

 I did the rewrites to comply with the requests Walter made in
 previous pull
 requests. Although not present as a bugzilla issue with the
 "preapproved" tag,
 I did interpreted it as preapproved based on a forum post made by you
 [2].

 I know that focus has shifted to GC, reference counting, C++ and so
 on, but
 you're not making it easy for someone to contribute.

 [1] https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/4321
 [2] http://forum.dlang.org/post/lfoe82$17c0$1 digitalmars.com


 Back at the time I was working on D/Objective-C, my separate work on a
 feature

 treatment: no
 comment from Walter in months. It's time-consuming to maintain a
 complex pull
 request against a changing master branch, and it was abandoned at some
 point
 because I got tired of maintaining it with no review in sight.

 Using Github was a new thing back then, so I didn't necessarily expect
 the

 comment at
 all made me rethink things. It made me dread a similar fate would await
 D/Objective-C. It was one of the reasons I stopped working on it. Now
 that Jacob
 has taken over the Herculean task of making it work with current DMD
 after a few
 years of falling behind and of refactoring it as a series of pull
 requests by
 sub-feature to make it easier to review, I fear more and more it'll
 get the same

 are now)
 and then abandoned (when Jacob patience and/or spare time runs out).

 It would be sad to see all those efforts wasted.


 Yes it would. The problem is I have a hard time reviewing complex things
 I don't understand, so I procrastinate. The fault is mine, not with your
 work.


Even simpler things you quite often forget about.
Great example was my PR for __traits(allMembers, hint after two major 
releases it no longer passes the auto tester. And now I have no will to 
update it. As my environment was never kitted out for it.

I think from now on, we need to put in place some way to ping both of 
you and Andrei. Basically if you get messaged about a PR/issue you are 
required to respond.
Apr 16 2015
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 4/16/15 9:06 PM, Rikki Cattermole wrote:

 I think from now on, we need to put in place some way to ping both of
 you and Andrei. Basically if you get messaged about a PR/issue you are
 required to respond.


We'd do a lot better at responding timely to issues we're the bottleneck 
of if we could find a way to offload some of the important and urgent 
stuff that needs doing and is easy yet nobody does.

There is something odd about the BDFL working on making 
http://dlang.org/phobos/ palatable or on capitalizing strings, isn't it?


Andrei
Apr 17 2015
parent Rikki Cattermole <alphaglosined gmail.com> writes:
On 18/04/2015 3:07 a.m., Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 4/16/15 9:06 PM, Rikki Cattermole wrote:

 I think from now on, we need to put in place some way to ping both of
 you and Andrei. Basically if you get messaged about a PR/issue you are
 required to respond.


 We'd do a lot better at responding timely to issues we're the bottleneck
 of if we could find a way to offload some of the important and urgent
 stuff that needs doing and is easy yet nobody does.

 There is something odd about the BDFL working on making
 http://dlang.org/phobos/ palatable or on capitalizing strings, isn't it?


 Andrei


I agree and I'd love to help. Unfortunately there is still a minimum 
environment requirements that's a little too high for me to do any 
development in those repos at the moment.

I'll eventually get it sorted out and give out the script which makes it 
happen ;) But I'm no there yet.
Apr 17 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent Michel Fortin <michel.fortin michelf.ca> writes:
On 2015-04-17 02:19:49 +0000, Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> said:


 On 4/16/2015 10:47 AM, Michel Fortin wrote:

 It would be sad to see all those efforts wasted.


 
 Yes it would. The problem is I have a hard time reviewing complex 
 things I don't understand, so I procrastinate. The fault is mine, not 
 with your work.


I see. Well, you shouldn't blame yourself for being uncomfortable 
reviewing an invasion of alien concepts coming from another language. I 
guess it should have been expected. But now that we've nailed what 
stalls the review process, we can try to find a solution.

Here's an idea: instead of doing the review all by yourself, Jacob and 
you (or alternatively you and me) could do a "Skype review" with screen 
sharing where you scroll through the changes on Github and get every 
line and every new concept explained to you as you go. That should help 
make things understandable. And you can always do a second pass all by 
yourself to inspect the details later, if you wish.

Would that make you more confortable?

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin michelf.ca
http://michelf.ca
Apr 17 2015
prev sibling parent Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2015-04-17 04:19, Walter Bright wrote:


 Yes it would. The problem is I have a hard time reviewing complex things
 I don't understand, so I procrastinate. The fault is mine, not with your
 work.


Please let me know if there's something I can do to make this easier for 
you. Anything I can explain how Objective-C or the code works.

I don't know if you have looked at the latest pull request [1] yet but 
I've written some documentation (in the commit message and in the pull 
request) of how calling Objective-C methods work. The code itself is not 
that big anymore. It's just for calling instance methods this in this 
pull request.

[1] https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/4321

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Apr 17 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent "Meta" <jared771 gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 06:02:19 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 1. Challenging Walter on anything and everything seems to have 
 become a rite of passage in our community. Some of the reviews 
 of his code are the most petty and meaningless I've seen in my 
 career, bar none. It doesn't help that he doesn't budge on some 
 of the petty issues, thus a vicious circle gets created. In a 
 recent review, after his code had been pecked within an inch of 
 its death, it took me minutes to find two bugs that nobody had 
 the eyes for in spite of every token of his code having been 
 scrutinized.


I've recently been guilty of this[1], and I stand behind my 
nitpicking 100%. The code was fine, but toCapitalize was a bad 
enough name (being improper English) that I felt compelled to 
comment. Spiritus quidem promptus; caro vero infirma.
Apr 16 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Joakim" <dlang joakim.fea.st> writes:
On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 06:02:19 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 This is good stuff. FWIW we do have a keyword "preapproved" on 
 bugzilla:

 https://issues.dlang.org/buglist.cgi?f1=keywords&list_id=200200&o1=equals&query_format=advanced&resolution=---&v1=preapproved

 It has 23 items of various ages. I didn't notice the presence 
 of the keyword helping in any way. So spending time annotating 
 issues with "preapproved" is possibly a waste of time. I 
 suspect maintaining lists of stuff to do is also low-impact.


Is this keyword documented somewhere easily accessible, like on 
the wiki?  If not, how do you expect someone new and looking for 
a way to contribute to find it?  I agree that it's unlikely that 
someone will saunter in and learn the codebase and provide good 
fixes in their spare time, which is why I remain skeptical of the 
open source approach taken by the D community.  But there are 
ways to encourage more open source contribution, and prioritized 
lists are one of them.


 Yeah, we know what to do. A ton of it is easy to derive 
 directly from the vision, do I need to provide the food already 
 chewed? Eliminate gratuitous garbage from Phobos, create good 
 unique and reference counted types (and see if we need 
 something beside DIP25 to make them safe), improve associative 
 arrays (apparently there's no reasonable way to free an AA 
 manually...), documentation, documentation, documentation... 
 there's a bunch of stuff to do all over the difficulty 
 spectrum. It's painfully trivial to find easy and high impact 
 stuff to work on. That's not low-hanging fruit, it's fruit that 
 falls into one's lap.


The problem is that there's so much "fruit" in bugzilla that 
someone new is overwhelmed.  If they're not scratching their own 
itch, how do they know whether the random issue they've chosen is 
actually a priority?  If you want to pull new people from outside 
the core team, you need to provide them an easy way in, such as 
an easily found, prioritized list from the core team, after which 
they may realize it's not so hard after all, and stick around and 
provide more.  Yes, you're holding their hands initially, but if 
it leads to the core team getting larger, that's well worth it.


 Now that I got started, there are two more topics that I think 
 we could do a lot better at:

 1. Challenging Walter on anything and everything seems to have 
 become a rite of passage in our community. Some of the reviews 
 of his code are the most petty and meaningless I've seen in my 
 career, bar none. It doesn't help that he doesn't budge on some 
 of the petty issues, thus a vicious circle gets created. In a 
 recent review, after his code had been pecked within an inch of 
 its death, it took me minutes to find two bugs that nobody had 
 the eyes for in spite of every token of his code having been 
 scrutinized.


I've been surprised by how much people challenge him on the 
forums, seemingly ignoring the fact that he's been writing 
compilers for decades.  He's been very patient in explaining his 
viewpoint on the forums, which is a big plus for the community, 
though it would be better if he didn't have to repeat himself so 
many times.


 2. Turning the hay over and over and over again. I've mentioned 
 this before - there's just an astounding amount of tweaking and 
 shuffling and moving around code that works well under 
 serious-sounding pretexts such as "refactoring" and 
 "maintenance". Sometimes really difficult stuff, too. A lot of 
 it is low-impact work that makes Phobos' codebase look horribly 
 overcooked. There's been more than one instance when I 
 revisited some file I knew most of the code of. Elegant 
 solutions. Nimble code. Just to find it mutated into the stuff 
 of Agent Smith's world. One horrible contraption layered on top 
 of another to the extent it's difficult to find where work is 
 being done.

 There is a way out of this, and that for us all to give good 
 examples that demonstrate what good contributions are and what 
 good reviews are.


Sure, and lists of priority issues can even emphasize to the 
current contributors which high-impact work you feel should be 
done first.

You have pointed out which direction you want the community to go 
in the vision document, but some of those are too broad, ie 
"improve quality."  Stick some meat on those bones, by providing 
a list of issues you feel would move those agendas forward, and 
you might get the language moving further in your direction.
Apr 16 2015
next sibling parent "Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQi?= writes:
On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 08:12:59 UTC, Joakim wrote:

 for a way to contribute to find it?  I agree that it's unlikely 
 that someone will saunter in and learn the codebase and provide 
 good fixes in their spare time, which is why I remain skeptical 
 of the open source approach taken by the D community.


Yet again, people do learn parts of the code base and create 
their own version of it... Like ketmar and I, and probably others 
too.

To some people the main road block is a total disregard for CS as 
a profession in the D community. The language design discussions 
that moves outside C++ are like watching people building their 
own house without reading up on the topic then telling the 
carpenter that they are completely clueless for pointing out some 
real issues that will actually make the house rot. Like putting 
the damp sealing on the outside of the wall rather than on the 
inside, clearly you should put it where it rains? (Nope, the 
humidity is coming from inside the house in winter).

Too much NiH and ignorance wears out people with a CS background 
and they leave, which incidentally are the people you need the 
most for designing novel language features! There's a big 
difference between implementing a spec and designing it. Stick to 
Simula/Java and you are safe. Stick to C++ and you get some of 
their problems. Invent your own without spending time on PLT and 
you'll never get done.

Still, D is better off than the BitC community, which have very 
educated discussions. So it is safe to say that to pull it off 
you also have to be stubborn even when you are wrong (otherwise 
you'll just redesign over and over and over). A hard balance to 
get right. C++ is getting there (after being wrong). I think D 
can too.
Apr 16 2015
prev sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 4/16/15 1:12 AM, Joakim wrote:
[edited]

Cherry-picking one easy-to-address question:


 If they're not scratching their own itch, how do they know whether
 the random issue they've chosen is actually a priority?


That's simple - does it fit with the vision or not? Walter and I also 
find it useful to use that way.


 Sure, and lists of priority issues can even emphasize to the current
 contributors which high-impact work you feel should be done first.

 You have pointed out which direction you want the community to go in the
 vision document, but some of those are too broad, ie "improve quality."
 Stick some meat on those bones, by providing a list of issues you feel
 would move those agendas forward, and you might get the language moving
 further in your direction.


This is worth trying. I'll put a list together perhaps during the 
hackathon. The more difficult part will be maintaining it, which becomes 
a job - one extra thing on the plate of the same people. I guess the 
first item on the list will be "maintain the list". Deliciously 
self-referential :o).


Andrei
Apr 16 2015
parent reply Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2015-04-16 16:49, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:


 This is worth trying. I'll put a list together perhaps during the
 hackathon. The more difficult part will be maintaining it, which becomes
 a job - one extra thing on the plate of the same people. I guess the
 first item on the list will be "maintain the list". Deliciously
 self-referential :o).


There are some thing other developer are better suited for and some 
things are better suited to be handled by a project manager/owner.

Example, updating the website is something I would recommend delegating 
to someone else. Deciding the future of D sounds more a job for you and 
Walter.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Apr 16 2015
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 4/16/15 9:51 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:

 Example, updating the website is something I would recommend delegating
 to someone else.


Good example. The question is who'd want to take that job. -- Andrei
Apr 16 2015
parent reply Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2015-04-16 19:36, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 4/16/15 9:51 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:

 Example, updating the website is something I would recommend delegating
 to someone else.


 Good example. The question is who'd want to take that job. -- Andrei


That's the tricky part being a project manager, especially in an open 
source project like this when you cannot really tell anyone what to do. 
But last time you posted a [WORK] post on the newsgroup it seems like it 
worked quite good, there were quite a lot of updates on the site from 
other developers, if I recall correctly.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Apr 17 2015
next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 4/17/15 5:01 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:

 On 2015-04-16 19:36, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 4/16/15 9:51 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:

 Example, updating the website is something I would recommend delegating
 to someone else.


 Good example. The question is who'd want to take that job. -- Andrei


 That's the tricky part being a project manager, especially in an open
 source project like this when you cannot really tell anyone what to do.
 But last time you posted a [WORK] post on the newsgroup it seems like it
 worked quite good, there were quite a lot of updates on the site from
 other developers, if I recall correctly.


Well, last time I posted a [WORK] item was this:

http://forum.dlang.org/thread/mfesp4$9bn$1 digitalmars.com

Walter did it after we talked about it on the phone...


Andrei
Apr 17 2015
parent Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2015-04-17 17:00, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:


 Well, last time I posted a [WORK] item was this:

 http://forum.dlang.org/thread/mfesp4$9bn$1 digitalmars.com

 Walter did it after we talked about it on the phone...


Well, I'm not sure if it was the _latest_, but at some point (fairly 
recently) there were a lot of pull request to improve the site which was 
initiated by the you on the forums, if I recall correctly.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Apr 17 2015
prev sibling parent reply =?UTF-8?B?Ik3DoXJjaW8=?= Martins" <marcioapm gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 17 April 2015 at 12:01:36 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:

 On 2015-04-16 19:36, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 4/16/15 9:51 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:

 Example, updating the website is something I would recommend 
 delegating
 to someone else.


 Good example. The question is who'd want to take that job. -- 
 Andrei


 That's the tricky part being a project manager, especially in 
 an open source project like this when you cannot really tell 
 anyone what to do. But last time you posted a [WORK] post on 
 the newsgroup it seems like it worked quite good, there were 
 quite a lot of updates on the site from other developers, if I 
 recall correctly.


Sorry if I'm jumping to conclusions here, but I often see it 
mentioned on these forums how PR's sit open and untouched for 
weeks. Perhaps something should be done about that? Maybe try to 
find more people to help - more D "lieutenants".
People are busy, attention spans are small, could keeping things 
flowing faster keep more contributors interested?

P.S. Way to hijack SDC's thread...
Apr 17 2015
parent Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2015-04-17 17:09, "=?UTF-8?B?Ik3DoXJjaW8=?= Martins\" 
<marcioapm gmail.com>\"" wrote:


 P.S. Way to hijack SDC's thread...


That's what we do here ;)

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Apr 17 2015
prev sibling parent "Jakob Ovrum" <jakobovrum gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 06:02:19 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 1. Challenging Walter on anything and everything seems to have 
 become a rite of passage in our community. Some of the reviews 
 of his code are the most petty and meaningless I've seen in my 
 career, bar none. It doesn't help that he doesn't budge on some 
 of the petty issues, thus a vicious circle gets created. In a 
 recent review, after his code had been pecked within an inch of 
 its death, it took me minutes to find two bugs that nobody had 
 the eyes for in spite of every token of his code having been 
 scrutinized.


It has to be said that Walter's recent work on Phobos has wide 
appeal, is highly interesting (who doesn't like generic 
algorithms?) and relatively easy to review (requires no 
domain-specific knowledge apart from advanced D, perhaps some 
Unicode). In my experience, similarly themed PRs by other authors 
receive a similar amount of scrutiny. I'm hesitant to believe 
Walter's work is being heavily scrutinized just because it's 
Walter.
Apr 16 2015
prev sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 4/15/2015 10:07 PM, Joakim wrote:

 I understand that it's frustrating to get stuff done on a decentralized open
 source project, but you have to help contributors a bit in order for them to
 help you.  Your [WORK] appeals have been a great step- I had one of them open
in
 my browser to remind me to get to it, but Walter beat me to it- but the forum
is
 not easy to keep track of and navigate for newbies. How much harder would it be
 for you to stick all those in a single wiki page, to make it easier for noobs
to
 find and easy for us to point them at?  That's all I'm asking for.


Ask and ye shall receive:

https://issues.dlang.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&bugidtype=include&list_id=200235&order=Bug%20Number&query_format=advanced
Apr 16 2015
parent reply "Joakim" <dlang joakim.fea.st> writes:
On Friday, 17 April 2015 at 01:53:47 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 4/15/2015 10:07 PM, Joakim wrote:

 I understand that it's frustrating to get stuff done on a 
 decentralized open
 source project, but you have to help contributors a bit in 
 order for them to
 help you.  Your [WORK] appeals have been a great step- I had 
 one of them open in
 my browser to remind me to get to it, but Walter beat me to 
 it- but the forum is
 not easy to keep track of and navigate for newbies. How much 
 harder would it be
 for you to stick all those in a single wiki page, to make it 
 easier for noobs to
 find and easy for us to point them at?  That's all I'm asking 
 for.


 Ask and ye shall receive:

 https://issues.dlang.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&bugidtype=include&list_id=200235&order=Bug%20Number&query_format=advanced


That's precisely _not_ what I asked for.  The full results for 
that query numbers 3801 issues:

https://issues.dlang.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&bugidtype=include&limit=0&list_id=200235&order=bug_id&query_format=advanced

How is somebody new supposed to figure out where to start?  Set 
some priorities and people will follow your lead, ie flag issues 
that you think should be prioritized, given your greater 
understanding of the project, and make it easy for those who want 
to pitch in to find your list, as deadalnix just did.
Apr 16 2015
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 4/16/2015 8:20 PM, Joakim wrote:

 How is somebody new supposed to figure out where to start?  Set some priorities
 and people will follow your lead, ie flag issues that you think should be
 prioritized,


All the bugzilla issues are marked with a severity level. On the display, the 
red ones are more serious. Anyhow, with bugzilla's search page, the list can be 
sliced and crosscut all sorts of ways.



 given your greater understanding of the project, and make it easy
 for those who want to pitch in to find your list, as deadalnix just did.


Just address anything that looks interesting and is within one's abilities. 
There's plenty to choose from!
Apr 16 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent "Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQi?= writes:
On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 04:05:19 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 (sometimes trivial). Lists, labels, management techniques that 
 are touted in this forum every few months or so - no avail. The 
 vision document that everybody asked about? Read and dutifully 
 ignored


I've seen capable people in the forums repeatedly asking for 
things to do that matters, but not receiving an answer. Silence. 
That's lost opportunities. Frequently.

A vision for the language is still missing. Is it a system 
programming language, for what application area, or is it a java 
replacement? What are the missing bits for D to be a viable 
system programming language?

The vision document you created was like a milestone map without 
milestones and dependencies, and no measures to evaluate it by, 
but work did get done on GC/C++ even though the evaluation is 
missing. Where is the long term road map? What is at the end of 
the road? What are the dependencies? Where are the designs 
described? Where is a list of fun low-entry projects? How do you 
get there from the front page? How is the project organized?

Now that you are moving DMD to D, you surely can need some help 
with refactoring... That means you'll have do to design on paper 
that others can implement.

Why did you spend time on remaking the web site when several 
capable people were willing? What was the road block? The build 
system? The approval process? Why didn't you approve a design on 
paper and let someone else execute it?

Which one is the official production compiler? DMD, GDC, LDC or 
SDC? None? That's a roadblock by itself.
Apr 16 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "bachmeier" <no spam.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 04:05:19 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 On 4/15/15 8:42 PM, Joakim wrote:

 On Wednesday, 15 April 2015 at 08:13:20 UTC, deadalnix wrote:

 OK, do not expect SDC to compile your code yet, but it got to 
 a point
 where the base is fairly stable, and thing can get better. I 
 compiled
 a list of high impact items, ranging from relatively easy bug 
 fixes,
 to compiler guru level.

 https://github.com/deadalnix/SDC/wiki/TODO-list

 If some of you want to contribute, that'd be awesome. SDC can 
 happen,
 and you can be a part of this, so go cloning the repo now :)


 That's a nice list to get more people involved.  I've been
 calling for Andrei/Walter to put up a similar list on the D 
 wiki,
 with specific issues they think need dealing with or that would
 be pre-approved.


 Forgive my being skeptical but my repeated appeals to 
 contributions - most of them important, urgent, and of high 
 impact - sometimes labeled with [WORK] in this forum, have been 
 answered by the same very small kernel of contributors 
 (including Walter and myself), regardless of their difficulty 
 (sometimes trivial). Lists, labels, management techniques that 
 are touted in this forum every few months or so - no avail. The 
 vision document that everybody asked about? Read and dutifully 
 ignored - back to the next naming debate. The sad reality is 
 that if one of about a handful of core folks doesn't do it, it 
 won't get done. My resolution is to do more of everything; that 
 way more of everything will get done. -- Andrei


In my case I don't know where to start. I'll leave the Phobos and 
compiler code to the experts, but I'm sure I can help with 
documentation. On my own small projects, I can clone a repo, make 
a small change, and create a pull request. If it were that 
simple, I'd already be contributing to the documentation, because 
the things that need improvement aren't hard to find.

Unfortunately I have no idea how to get started. All I can find 
is this:

"The source code for the D website, compiler, runtime library, 
and Phobos (the standard library), are all available on GitHub. 
Contributions to the source code are done via pull requests. 
Please note that contributions to DMD source code will only be 
accepted if the author agrees to have the copyright of the code 
assigned to Digital Mars.

To find something to work on, you can search the bug list for 
issues that you can help fix, or view the most-voted-for issue 
list."

How do I make changes to the documentation and then test them? 
How do I know that I'm not wasting my time? What guidelines am I 
supposed to follow?

Rather than open that can of worms, I spend my scarce time 
working on my own D libraries and showing my coauthors/students 
how to use them. The problem may be a steep learning curve 
combined with a lack of clarity about what is expected. I don't 
think the problem is that the rest of us are simply unwilling to 
contribute.
Apr 16 2015
next sibling parent "weaselcat" <weaselcat gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 15:47:10 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 04:05:19 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
 wrote:

 On 4/15/15 8:42 PM, Joakim wrote:

 On Wednesday, 15 April 2015 at 08:13:20 UTC, deadalnix wrote:

 OK, do not expect SDC to compile your code yet, but it got 
 to a point
 where the base is fairly stable, and thing can get better. I 
 compiled
 a list of high impact items, ranging from relatively easy 
 bug fixes,
 to compiler guru level.

 https://github.com/deadalnix/SDC/wiki/TODO-list

 If some of you want to contribute, that'd be awesome. SDC 
 can happen,
 and you can be a part of this, so go cloning the repo now :)


 That's a nice list to get more people involved.  I've been
 calling for Andrei/Walter to put up a similar list on the D 
 wiki,
 with specific issues they think need dealing with or that 
 would
 be pre-approved.


 Forgive my being skeptical but my repeated appeals to 
 contributions - most of them important, urgent, and of high 
 impact - sometimes labeled with [WORK] in this forum, have 
 been answered by the same very small kernel of contributors 
 (including Walter and myself), regardless of their difficulty 
 (sometimes trivial). Lists, labels, management techniques that 
 are touted in this forum every few months or so - no avail. 
 The vision document that everybody asked about? Read and 
 dutifully ignored - back to the next naming debate. The sad 
 reality is that if one of about a handful of core folks 
 doesn't do it, it won't get done. My resolution is to do more 
 of everything; that way more of everything will get done. -- 
 Andrei


 In my case I don't know where to start. I'll leave the Phobos 
 and compiler code to the experts, but I'm sure I can help with 
 documentation. On my own small projects, I can clone a repo, 
 make a small change, and create a pull request. If it were that 
 simple, I'd already be contributing to the documentation, 
 because the things that need improvement aren't hard to find.

 Unfortunately I have no idea how to get started. All I can find 
 is this:

 "The source code for the D website, compiler, runtime library, 
 and Phobos (the standard library), are all available on GitHub. 
 Contributions to the source code are done via pull requests. 
 Please note that contributions to DMD source code will only be 
 accepted if the author agrees to have the copyright of the code 
 assigned to Digital Mars.

 To find something to work on, you can search the bug list for 
 issues that you can help fix, or view the most-voted-for issue 
 list."

 How do I make changes to the documentation and then test them? 
 How do I know that I'm not wasting my time? What guidelines am 
 I supposed to follow?

 Rather than open that can of worms, I spend my scarce time 
 working on my own D libraries and showing my coauthors/students 
 how to use them. The problem may be a steep learning curve 
 combined with a lack of clarity about what is expected. I don't 
 think the problem is that the rest of us are simply unwilling 
 to contribute.



Relating to the first part of your post,
While it may seem daunting, I found the D community extremely 
helpful and welcoming to new people submitting PRs. Just make 
sure you mention you're new to contributing to D in your PR.
Apr 16 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 4/16/15 8:47 AM, bachmeier wrote:

 How do I make changes to the documentation and then test them?


Please let me know if 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md 
floats your boat. We should make it more visible, too. -- Andrei
Apr 16 2015
parent reply "albatroz" <rmcjustino gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 17:33:09 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 On 4/16/15 8:47 AM, bachmeier wrote:
 Please let me know if 
 https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/blob/ma
ter/CONTRIBUTING.md 
 floats your boat. We should make it more visible, too. -- Andrei


Can the document be improved with additional info:
Were are the files to be changed?
How to generate new documentation files after making a change?

Thanks
Apr 17 2015
parent reply "bachmeier" <no spam.com> writes:
On Friday, 17 April 2015 at 13:20:19 UTC, albatroz wrote:

 On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 17:33:09 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
 wrote:

 On 4/16/15 8:47 AM, bachmeier wrote:
 Please let me know if 
 https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/blob/ma
ter/CONTRIBUTING.md 
 floats your boat. We should make it more visible, too. -- 
 Andrei


 Can the document be improved with additional info:
 Were are the files to be changed?
 How to generate new documentation files after making a change?

 Thanks


That helps (and yes it should be more visible, at least on the 
wiki where it talks about contributing).

What would be most helpful would be an example of fixing the 
documentation of a Phobos function. That would show how to do it 
as well as the kinds of changes to make.
Apr 17 2015
parent "Meta" <jared771 gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 17 April 2015 at 19:38:20 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 On Friday, 17 April 2015 at 13:20:19 UTC, albatroz wrote:

 On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 17:33:09 UTC, Andrei 
 Alexandrescu wrote:

 On 4/16/15 8:47 AM, bachmeier wrote:
 Please let me know if 
 https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/blob/ma
ter/CONTRIBUTING.md 
 floats your boat. We should make it more visible, too. -- 
 Andrei


 Can the document be improved with additional info:
 Were are the files to be changed?
 How to generate new documentation files after making a change?

 Thanks


 That helps (and yes it should be more visible, at least on the 
 wiki where it talks about contributing).

 What would be most helpful would be an example of fixing the 
 documentation of a Phobos function. That would show how to do 
 it as well as the kinds of changes to make.


If you're looking for examples:
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pulls?q=is%3Amerged+is%3Apr+author%3AMetaLang+documentation

I've been submitting PRs anywhere I think there's some ambiguity 
or something's not mentioned that should be. Another big one is 
just adding stuff like Params and Returns, etc.

Also, for anyone that cares, 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/3114 has 
been open for 22 days and is ready to be merged.
Apr 17 2015
prev sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 4/16/2015 8:47 AM, bachmeier wrote:

 In my case I don't know where to start. I'll leave the Phobos and compiler code
 to the experts, but I'm sure I can help with documentation. On my own small
 projects, I can clone a repo, make a small change, and create a pull request.
If
 it were that simple, I'd already be contributing to the documentation, because
 the things that need improvement aren't hard to find.

 Unfortunately I have no idea how to get started.



http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Phobos_Documentation_-_call_to_action_258777.html
Apr 16 2015
parent reply "bachmeier" <no spam.com> writes:
On Friday, 17 April 2015 at 02:11:29 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 4/16/2015 8:47 AM, bachmeier wrote:

 In my case I don't know where to start. I'll leave the Phobos 
 and compiler code
 to the experts, but I'm sure I can help with documentation. On 
 my own small
 projects, I can clone a repo, make a small change, and create 
 a pull request. If
 it were that simple, I'd already be contributing to the 
 documentation, because
 the things that need improvement aren't hard to find.

 Unfortunately I have no idea how to get started.



 http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Phobos_Documentation_-_call_to_action_258777.html


That's a good thread. Unfortunately it existed during my spring 
break. There should be a link to it on the wiki section I quoted. 
I will do that as my first contribution.
Apr 17 2015
parent "bachmeier" <no spam.com> writes:
On Friday, 17 April 2015 at 19:41:01 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 On Friday, 17 April 2015 at 02:11:29 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 4/16/2015 8:47 AM, bachmeier wrote:

 In my case I don't know where to start. I'll leave the Phobos 
 and compiler code
 to the experts, but I'm sure I can help with documentation. 
 On my own small
 projects, I can clone a repo, make a small change, and create 
 a pull request. If
 it were that simple, I'd already be contributing to the 
 documentation, because
 the things that need improvement aren't hard to find.

 Unfortunately I have no idea how to get started.



 http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Phobos_Documentation_-_call_to_action_258777.html


 That's a good thread. Unfortunately it existed during my spring 
 break. There should be a link to it on the wiki section I 
 quoted. I will do that as my first contribution.


Done 
http://wiki.dlang.org/Get_involved#Contribute_to_the_source_code_and_documentation
Apr 17 2015
prev sibling next sibling parent "Jakob Ovrum" <jakobovrum gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 04:05:19 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 Forgive my being skeptical but my repeated appeals to 
 contributions - most of them important, urgent, and of high 
 impact - sometimes labeled with [WORK] in this forum, have been 
 answered by the same very small kernel of contributors 
 (including Walter and myself), regardless of their difficulty 
 (sometimes trivial). Lists, labels, management techniques that 
 are touted in this forum every few months or so - no avail. The 
 vision document that everybody asked about? Read and dutifully 
 ignored - back to the next naming debate. The sad reality is 
 that if one of about a handful of core folks doesn't do it, it 
 won't get done. My resolution is to do more of everything; that 
 way more of everything will get done. -- Andrei


I use the vision document to prioritize my work; I currently have 
open PRs solving non-trivial safety (actually attribute inference 
in general) and manual memory management issues. I'd be really 
glad if the vision document saw continued life in the future.
Apr 16 2015
prev sibling parent "Kapps" <opantm2+spam gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 April 2015 at 04:05:19 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 Forgive my being skeptical but my repeated appeals to 
 contributions - most of them important, urgent, and of high 
 impact - sometimes labeled with [WORK] in this forum, have been 
 answered by the same very small kernel of contributors 
 (including Walter and myself), regardless of their difficulty 
 (sometimes trivial). Lists, labels, management techniques that 
 are touted in this forum every few months or so - no avail. The 
 vision document that everybody asked about? Read and dutifully 
 ignored - back to the next naming debate. The sad reality is 
 that if one of about a handful of core folks doesn't do it, it 
 won't get done. My resolution is to do more of everything; that 
 way more of everything will get done. -- Andrei


I think a significant part of the reason for this is that many 
people are simply happy with D now and tend to, aside from the 
core contributors, work on their own code rather than random 
issues from a list (even an organized one). I haven't submitted 
many pull requests, maybe a dozen or so in total, but when I have 
it was because there was something that simply prevented me from 
doing what I wanted to do. It's probably been several months 
since my last one because, simply put, I am not currently having 
issues that prevent me from moving forward. When I started using 
D (probably about four or five years ago), it felt like bugs were 
constant and you could either work around them or fix them. Now, 
there are much fewer bugs, let alone ones without a trivial 
workaround, making it less likely for people to contribute 
towards fixing these.
Apr 16 2015
prev sibling parent Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d puremagic.com> writes:
On 16 Apr 2015 05:45, "Joakim via Digitalmars-d" <
digitalmars-d puremagic.com> wrote:

 On Wednesday, 15 April 2015 at 08:13:20 UTC, deadalnix wrote:

 OK, do not expect SDC to compile your code yet, but it got to a point




where the base is fairly stable, and thing can get better. I compiled a
list of high impact items, ranging from relatively easy bug fixes, to
compiler guru level.

 https://github.com/deadalnix/SDC/wiki/TODO-list

 If some of you want to contribute, that'd be awesome. SDC can happen,




and you can be a part of this, so go cloning the repo now :)

 That's a nice list to get more people involved.  I've been
 calling for Andrei/Walter to put up a similar list on the D wiki,
 with specific issues they think need dealing with or that would
 be pre-approved.


I don't think such a thing on the wiki actually works.   Learned from back
in the days I was part-managing the Ubuntu forums, there's a difference
between putting up announcement (on the front page) and people actually
reading it.

http://wiki.dlang.org/GDC/ProjectIdeas

Maybe I should have named the page 'TODO' :)
Apr 16 2015