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digitalmars.D.announce - Announcing new DIP handling process

reply Dicebot <public dicebot.lv> writes:
After quite some preliminary discussions and preparations, new D
Improvement Proposals handling process is finally happenning. Please
read description and explanation here:

https://github.com/dlang/DIPs



There are two main goals for going this way:

1) Ensure communication between language authors and DIP authors,
establish better sense of actually contributing as opposed to simply
throwing ideas into the black box.

2) Improve overall quality of DIP documents to the point where language
authors can reasonably review them without spending too much time on
trivialities.

Additional benefit I am hoping for is to have a centralized place to
subscribe to learn about all coming major changes coming to language for
those who can't keep up with NG regularly.



Right now https://github.com/dlang/DIPs repository contains archive
folder with already implemented proposals imported from wiki (please
tell me if there are any other already implemented DIPs that were not
marked as such in wiki).

All authors of existing DIPs who want to keep pursuing the idea will
have to re-submit them as a pull requests towards new repo. This is
required so that we can filter abandoned proposals and focus on
documents that have active authors backing them.



I will act as a DIP manager for the time being. Please note that role of
DIP manager does not imply any decision power regarding DIP approval, it
remains an exclusive domain of language authors.
Jul 09 2016
next sibling parent reply Seb <seb wilzba.ch> writes:
On Saturday, 9 July 2016 at 12:56:48 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 After quite some preliminary discussions and preparations, new 
 D Improvement Proposals handling process is finally happenning. 
 Please read description and explanation here:

 [...]


Sweet! A bit of noise:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4s08h4/the_d_language_has_a_new_dip_d_improvement/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12061181
Jul 09 2016
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 07/09/2016 09:11 AM, Seb wrote:

 On Saturday, 9 July 2016 at 12:56:48 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 After quite some preliminary discussions and preparations, new D
 Improvement Proposals handling process is finally happenning. Please
 read description and explanation here:

 [...]


 Sweet! A bit of noise:

 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4s08h4/the_d_language_has_a_new_dip_d_improvement/

 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12061181


Thanks! Don't forget hackerne.ws looks at referrer and automatically 
bans posts that come from an explicit link (like the one above). What 
you need to do is post and then let people know what time the post was. 
Then they can see the post by going to the "new" section and look for 
posts around that time. -- Andrei
Jul 09 2016
prev sibling next sibling parent reply ZombineDev <petar.p.kirov gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 9 July 2016 at 12:56:48 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 After quite some preliminary discussions and preparations, new 
 D Improvement Proposals handling process is finally happenning. 
 Please read description and explanation here:

 https://github.com/dlang/DIPs



 There are two main goals for going this way:

 1) Ensure communication between language authors and DIP 
 authors, establish better sense of actually contributing as 
 opposed to simply throwing ideas into the black box.

 2) Improve overall quality of DIP documents to the point where 
 language authors can reasonably review them without spending 
 too much time on trivialities.

 Additional benefit I am hoping for is to have a centralized 
 place to subscribe to learn about all coming major changes 
 coming to language for those who can't keep up with NG 
 regularly.



 Right now https://github.com/dlang/DIPs repository contains 
 archive folder with already implemented proposals imported from 
 wiki (please tell me if there are any other already implemented 
 DIPs that were not marked as such in wiki).

 All authors of existing DIPs who want to keep pursuing the idea 
 will have to re-submit them as a pull requests towards new 
 repo. This is required so that we can filter abandoned 
 proposals and focus on documents that have active authors 
 backing them.



 I will act as a DIP manager for the time being. Please note 
 that role of DIP manager does not imply any decision power 
 regarding DIP approval, it remains an exclusive domain of 
 language authors.


Can the new DIP process be used to evaluate library proposals? 
That way a high level design could be fleshed out and approved 
before the contributor goes too far with implementing a design 
which would be rejected.
Jul 09 2016
parent reply Dicebot <public dicebot.lv> writes:
On 07/09/2016 09:11 PM, ZombineDev wrote:

 Can the new DIP process be used to evaluate library proposals? That way
 a high level design could be fleshed out and approved before the
 contributor goes too far with implementing a design which would be
 rejected.


It is quite hard. To reasonably evaluate library proposal one has to
have at least proof of concept implementation showing intended API. It
isn't easy to fit into abstract DIP format.

I can't advise much on this part because I have been trying to stay away
from Phobos affairs for a long time and don't know existing status quo
about it.
Jul 09 2016
parent ZombineDev <petar.p.kirov gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 9 July 2016 at 21:21:54 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 On 07/09/2016 09:11 PM, ZombineDev wrote:

 Can the new DIP process be used to evaluate library proposals? 
 That way a high level design could be fleshed out and approved 
 before the contributor goes too far with implementing a design 
 which would be rejected.


 It is quite hard. To reasonably evaluate library proposal one 
 has to have at least proof of concept implementation showing 
 intended API. It isn't easy to fit into abstract DIP format.


It depends on the domain and scope of the proposal. See for 
example the C++17 file system API: 
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2016/p021
r0.html#class-path. I think you'll agree that such a proposal can easily be
evaluated solely on its interface, without any need to look at the
implementation.

In other domains, such as algorithms, metaprogramming and 
concurrency / parallelism a proof of concept is much more needed.

I think the main question is: Is this design feasible? If there's 
any doubt, a proof of concept should be required.


 I can't advise much on this part because I have been trying to 
 stay away from Phobos affairs for a long time and don't know 
 existing status quo about it.


The status quo is that all larger library additions should be 
approved by Walter or Andrei and new modules should go through 
the review process http://wiki.dlang.org/Review/Process. What I 
currently find missing in the review process is a way to get a 
consensus on the high-level design. If a larger design issue is 
brought up during the review process it may require a significant 
rewrite which is a waste of the contributor's time and can be 
very demotivating.
Jul 09 2016
prev sibling next sibling parent Seb <seb wilzba.ch> writes:
On Saturday, 9 July 2016 at 12:56:48 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 After quite some preliminary discussions and preparations, new 
 D Improvement Proposals handling process is finally happenning. 
 Please read description and explanation here:

 [...]


On reddit Steve Klabnik from the Rust team mentioned that they 
are currently trying to refine their RFC process. It could be 
worthwhile to learn from their experiences:

http://aturon.github.io/blog/2016/07/05/rfc-refinement/
https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs
Jul 11 2016
prev sibling parent Dicebot <public dicebot.lv> writes:
I have added new "tips" section to the process readme
(https://github.com/dlang/DIPs#advices-for-writing-great-dips) to make
potential DIP authors less excited and more prepared to real work
awaiting ahead :)
Jul 13 2016