• Siarhei Siamashka (19/25) Dec 25 2022 This is a spin off from
• Iain Buclaw (12/16) Dec 27 2022 It's going to be based on v2.100.2, and in principle yes, more
• Jesse Phillips (10/17) Dec 27 2022 It is really difficult to identify changes and how they apply to

Siarhei Siamashka <siarhei.siamashka gmail.com> writes:

This is a spin off from 
https://forum.dlang.org/post/to2fjp$cqb$1 digitalmars.com

On Thursday, 22 December 2022 at 20:44:50 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:
 On 12/22/2022 4:05 AM, Siarhei Siamashka wrote:
 Would selecting some compiler version as LTS and backporting 
 only minor bugfixes to it require too much effort?

 If someone wants to volunteer to do this, I would welcome it. 
 In fact, an LTS version isn't even necessary. Any fix could be 
 backported to any previous D release.

Sounds good. How is this going to work in practice?

I think that v2.100.x is a good choice because this frontend 
version is used by GDC 12. It's included in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, 
which is going to be supported at least until April 2027, see 
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

GDC 12 itself is likely to have 3 more bugfix updates (12.3, 12.4 
and 12.5), see https://gcc.gnu.org/develop.html#timeline

This is the list of GDC related commits from the GCC 12 branch: 
https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git&a=search&h=refs%2Fheads%2Freleases%2Fgcc-12&st=author&s=Iain+Buclaw

GDC 12.1 was based on DMD frontend v2.100.0 and GDC 12.2 got it 
upgraded to v2.100.1

Now I wonder, which frontend version will be used by GDC 12.3? Is 
it going to be v2.100.2? Are there any plans to backport even 
more frontend bugfixes for the future GDC 12.4 and GDC 12.5 
releases?

Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw gdcproject.org> writes:

On Monday, 26 December 2022 at 02:56:47 UTC, Siarhei Siamashka 
wrote:
 Now I wonder, which frontend version will be used by GDC 12.3? 
 Is it going to be v2.100.2? Are there any plans to backport 
 even more frontend bugfixes for the future GDC 12.4 and GDC 
 12.5 releases?

It's going to be based on v2.100.2, and in principle yes, more 
bug fixes from upstream dmd will be backported to the 12.x 
release branch as an when they become necessary.

There already have been some extra changes gone in to fix some 
porting issues, as well as a few ICEs.  I have to mostly rely on 
someone else creating a gdc bug report for every issue fixed in 
upstream dmd though so it is in my queue to backport.  Otherwise 
changes made to upstream dmd - even those made by myself - will 
just end up in mainline only as part of the routine merging of 
dmd-master -> gdc-13.x.

Jesse Phillips <Jesse.K.Phillips+D gmail.com> writes:

On Monday, 26 December 2022 at 02:56:47 UTC, Siarhei Siamashka 
wrote:
 This is a spin off from 
 https://forum.dlang.org/post/to2fjp$cqb$1 digitalmars.com

 Sounds good. How is this going to work in practice?

 I think that v2.100.x is a good choice because this frontend 
 version is used by GDC 12. It's included in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, 
 which is going to be supported at least until April 2027, see 
 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/


It is really difficult to identify changes and how they apply to 
different versions. Having a target LTS is good as it provides  a 
version to evaluate if a bug fix can be applied.

If a few people are interested, they could track the bug fixes 
applied to mainline and try to apply them to the 100.x. This 
person does not need to come up with the fixes, even just taking 
one that integrate cleanly would be beneficial.

I would expect that it would not add too much work for a release.