Category Archives: D Foundation

DConf T-Shirts and the Human Resource Fund

I announced the Human Resource Fund back in April as part of an initiative we’re working on with companies using D in production. It was seeded by WekaIO. Now we need to see it grow.

We always have an excess of t-shirts after DConf. Often, they are given away. This year, we intentionally ordered many more than necessary. Some were given away to “Friends of D” (such as the venue staff), but the rest were intended to help us raise money.

Some of the shirts remained in London. The remainder were given to several volunteers to carry with them back home, the goal being to position them around the world so that we can minimize shipping costs. Now, we’re ready to start sending the shirts through the mail.

Help us by donating $60 to the Human Resource Fund and one of our volunteers will send you a DConf 2019 t-shirt. To take advantage of this, you have to donate through the following campaign:

The D Language Foundation will reimburse each volunteer for the shipping costs. In order to help us minimize those costs and maximize the amount we get to keep, we’ve set up a menu organized by shirt size and region, as shown in the following screenshot.

Screenshot of donation form. This campaign will help us minimize shipping costs and keep track in real time of the number of shirts remaining. Once the shirts are gone, the campaign is closed. So please, when you make your donation, help us out by selecting the region in which you live if there are still shirts available.

Those of you who have seen our Open Collective page may be aware that Gold Donors, those who make a one-time donation of $100 or more, receive a DMan t-shirt. Personal Sponsors, those who commit to an annually recurring donation of $200 or more, receive a DMan t-shirt and a guaranteed Early-Bird discount to the next DConf. We’re extending both of those packages to the Human Resource Fund campaign.

To take advantage of this, please donate through the HR Fund campaign page:

After I receive notification from Flipcause of your donation, I’ll contact you to verify your shipping address and determine the size and color you’d prefer for your new DMan t-shirt.

Dman t-shirts.

Please help us grow this fund! The General Fund is also important and we still welcome donations there, but the Human Resource Fund will be our primary focus for the next few months. The sooner we reach the levels we need, the sooner we can hire people to work on important and difficult tasks in the D ecosystem.

DConf 2019 Recap

In late November of last year, Laeeth Isharc of Symmetry Investments expressed interest in hosting DConf 2019 in London. On a personal note, I had been looking for an excuse to get back to London since my brief visit at the end of the first Berlin DConf in 2016, so as my inbox filled with emails discussing possible venues, my excitement started to build. At one point, the Royal Institution was among the list of candidates.

I couldn’t make an announcement yet as nothing was certain, but I did start teasing it on Twitter and here on the blog. At our first D Language Foundation quarterly meeting on December 1, there was unanimous agreement that London was the place to be. As the days passed and it seemed to be a near certainty, I was eager to make the announcement, but near certainty is not certainty. I had to wait until Symmetry had selected a venue. That news reached my inbox on December 21. I announced it on the blog the next day.

After that, it was time to get into the details.

Planning a DConf

Past editions of DConf were organized either by hosts with employees who regularly organize conferences as part of their job descriptions, or, in the case of DConf 2018, an event planner hired by the host. This year there were no event planners and no dedicated conference organizers. It was a very different experience compared to my first peek behind the DConf curtain last year. Most of the details were hashed out in numerous emails and phone calls with Belinda Liao. Though we can thank Laeeth and Symmetry for making DConf 2019 happen, we owe a big thanks to Belinda for making it work.

I first became acquainted with Belinda–who Laeeth introduced as his “chief of staff in London”, who Symmetry’s tech team affectionately refer to as “the official nag”, and whose official title is Business Manager for Technology at Symmetry–during last year’s Symmetry Autumn of Code. Throughout the planning for DConf, she was the one doing all of the legwork. She also made sure we covered all of the bases, querying me for our requirements, pointing out anything I overlooked, and bringing new ideas.

The venue told us they would handle the live stream, but we also wanted a separate solution for recording and producing the individual talk videos. Belinda hired Stage Engage, who sent a single technician, Rowan While, to get the job done. He set up multiple cameras and sat at his primary camera in a back corner for the entirety of the three days of talks. He and his colleagues did an excellent job and three weeks after DConf the link to download the videos was sitting in my inbox. They’re all available on our YouTube channel and are accessible, along with the slides for each talk, through the DConf 2019 schedule.

During the talk submission period, Ethan Watson reached out to tell us he could submit a talk, help us in reviewing drafts of the speakers’ slides, or volunteer to be the emcee. Andrei suggested he do all three. So he did!

This year was the first time we asked the speakers to submit drafts of their slides. Last year, Andrei participated in a conference where the speakers were required to present their talks via Skype for review prior to the conference. He suggested to me at the end of DConf 2018 that we might want to consider that this year. When Ethan came onboard, he suggested instead simply reviewing drafts of the slides, which is standard procedure at the Game Developer’s Conference where he had previously presented. So we set up a deadline for the speakers to send us their drafts. Ethan reviewed them and provided feedback.

Planning the peripherals

When I first heard we might be going to London, I wanted to find some places to see other than the well-known tourist spots. On my first visit, I’d only had a day to be a tourist. This time, my wife was coming along and we were making a two-week trip out of it. So I hit YouTube to search for some video guides. That’s where I found Joolz Guides.

Julian McDonnell uses the channel to post London history walks and travel films. A filmmaker and actor, he also makes himself available for private guided walks through his web site. The idea came to me later than it should have, but in late February I contacted Julian to see if he would be available for a couple of pre-DConf walks. He doesn’t generally work with large groups, though he told me he had scheduled a pub crawl with 18 employees of a company. So we set 18 as the maximum size of a group, worked out a payment structure based on the total number of people, and I got Andrei’s approval for the foundation to cover the cost.

Around the same time, I got in touch with a pub near the venue. Finding a nightly gathering spot was a concern from the beginning. At past conferences, it was either the “official” hotel or, last year, the venue itself. There were several hotel options around the venue, many of them rather pricey. The budget hotels didn’t strike me as places where we could be holding our nightly “BeerConf”. I wanted to avoid the situation that happened in 2017 in Berlin when the hotel staff kicked us out of the lobby and relegated us to a back room. Belinda offered suggestions and I also sought advice from Russel Winder. Ultimately, I stumbled upon the Prince Arthur Pub while poking around Google Maps one night.

The pub has a second-floor space available for private hire. Getting it booked for three nights was a simple process. It also presented an opportunity for sponsorship. Ali Çehreli had been hoping to get his employer, Mercedes Benz Research and Development North America, to sponsor us in one form or another. We had been looking at potential swag, but now that we had the pub, he got approval for the company to cover the booking fee and a couple of rounds of drinks for each person who joined us each night.

Later on, Symmetry rented a different space nearby for the third night, including beer and food. So we had a cozy neighborhood pub for the first two nights of BeerConf and a more upscale bar for the third. Two different atmospheres that both allowed us all to have a good time.

The tours

The first of the two tours we booked with Julian took place two days before the conference, starting outside the Ritz at Green Park station (which, as it turns out, is right up the street from Symmetry) and ended up at the Strand near Charring Cross. The next day we met at Temple station and went through Temple (the legal district named for Temple Church, which was built by the Knights Templar) and on a winding route through the City of London.

Julian pointed out a number of sites we most likely would not have picked out on our own, giving us little nuggets of history for each. For me, some of the highlights were the building where the Beatles did their famous rooftop concert, the tailor shop that served as a front in the movie Kingsman: The Secret Service, the story of Temple Church (which we decided at the time not to go inside, but which I will visit on my next London trip to see the tomb of William Marshal), St. Etheldreda’s Church in Ely Place (dating back to the reign of Edward I), and the Charterhouse. Oh, and an interesting bit of trivia about the origin of the Japanese word for suit.

Julian is an entertaining guide and I believe everyone enjoyed the tours. If you’re ever in London with time to spare, I recommend you contact him about a private walk or a historical pub crawl.

99 City Road

The conference took place on the second floor of Inmarsat’s Old Street office building. Some of us arrived before 8:00 am on the first day and were directed by the security staff to a cozy little waiting area on the first floor. When the time came, we were guided to a side entrance and issued ID cards that would allow us access through the main entrance through Saturday.

As far as I’m aware, the conference went smoothly for just about everyone on site. There were a few hiccups along the way, most of which were noticed by few, if any, of the attendees. For example, those of us early arrivals on the first day found that the power outlets were located under trapdoors scattered throughout the room, but they were out of range of many of the seats. Before it became an issue, Belinda appeared with two of the venue staff, all bearing power strips. Belinda put out most fires before anyone smelled smoke.

Speaking of fires, we started the third day with a test of the building’s fire alarm system. It wasn’t a drill, just a test, so we didn’t have to go anywhere. All was well. Until Steven Schveighoffer got about 75% through his talk. The Stage Engage team edited it out of their recording, but in the live stream, you can see the point where Steve was interrupted by the fire alarm. This time, it was no test. We had to evacuate the building. Several folks got outside and were told to move down the street before abruptly being called back. Five minutes later, everyone filed back into the conference hall and Steve was able to finish his talk.

The venue staff encountered their own minor issue on the first day. At every DConf, we have mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks, but the coffee is generally available all day. At 99 City Road, they’re used to events with “coffee breaks” in the mid-morning and mid-afternoon, where the coffee is set up and taken down along with the snacks. They soon learned that many DConf attendees are powered by caffeine, so they adapted and left the coffee out all day for the duration of the conference.

The food provided for our lunch each day was fantastic. Speaking for myself, it’s the best food I’ve ever had at a DConf (I did not attend the 2014 and 2015 editions, but I doubt that they compare). It was so good that I went back for seconds each day, which was possible because we had an abundance of food. If we find ourselves at this venue again, the quality of lunch is something we know we don’t have to worry about.

We did encounter one major issue this year, though it did not affect the conference attendees. A number of remote viewers on the first day encountered issues with the live stream, with some unable to see it and others having audio trouble. The venue was using Webex to handle the live stream. Sinisa Poznanovic, the venue’s A/V tech, attempted to switch to YouTube during the lunch break, but the video was oddly being flipped horizontally. He was unable to resolve the issue before the afternoon session, but he promised to stay after we left in the evening until he got it working. When we came in the next morning, the YouTube live stream was set up and working properly. I have to say it was a pleasure working with Sinisa and he has our gratitude for the great work he did throughout the conference.

The Webex issue is something none of us foresaw, but it’s possible we could have. Belinda had sent me a PDF with the links and login information several days before the conference. At the time, I was in Canterbury hanging out with a couple of old friends. I had never heard of Webex, but a cursory search on my phone showed that it’s owned by Cisco. That and the fact that it’s what the venue crew always use were enough to satisfy me, so I searched no further and went back to my vacation. In hindsight, had I dug more deeply into the search results (which I have since done), I would have learned that 64-bit Linux is not officially supported. Had I posted the login details to the forums as soon as I got them from Belinda, those with negative Webex experiences could have spoken up prior to the conference. Such red flags might have motivated us to insist on using YouTube instead.

In the future, we’ll require YouTube for all of our live streaming and, if we encounter anything new, I’ll enlist some help to do more thorough vetting in an effort to uncover potential problems.

The AGM

One of the proposals that came in during the talk submission period was from Nicholas Wilson outlining an Annual General Meeting. When the selection committee met to select this year’s speakers, we decided it would not be feasible to have an AGM as part of the regular schedule. We agreed instead to hold it before the Hackathon.

Just as the DConf Hackathon isn’t the sort of event most people think of when they hear the term, we didn’t envision the AGM as the sort of meeting corporate shareholders would be familiar with. We wanted to limit it to two hours so that we would have time for people to discuss their Hackathon plans before lunch. Nicholas had the idea and put together the agenda, so he would be the moderator. Ethan and I would roam the room with mics so attendees could ask questions. Initially, we had no plans to live stream the event, but in the end, we decided to do it anyway.

The meeting began with an announcement from Andrei. For those who haven’t heard, he is stepping away from his leadership role in the D Language Foundation. He’s still involved in the D community and still manages the foundation’s finances, but for personal reasons, he can no longer devote the time and attention a leadership role requires. Átila Neves was invited to join the team and take over that role. To what I’m certain will be the benefit of the D community, he accepted. It was made possible because Laeeth, his employer, agreed to allow him to do foundation work on Symmetry time.

One of the benefits of DConf is face-to-face communication. Some of the conversations that take place lead to new ideas, collaborations, and projects, but the majority of them are lost to time and memory. In our first AGM, we have not only the benefit of face-to-face communication but also a video record. We covered a lot of ground in the meeting: DUB, DIP 1000, the PR queue, shared, @property, std.experimental, DMD as a library, the DIP process, and more. The ideas put forward are there on video so they won’t be lost. And, thanks to the note-taking skills of Johannes Loher, we have a nice list of action items to work with.

One direct result of the AGM is that I recently revised the DIP process to address some concerns that have been raised in recent times. More items will be ticked off the action list over time.

The quarterly D Language Foundation meeting

The first two quarterly meetings took place over Skype. This time, we were able to hold it face-to-face. Andrei, Walter, Ali, and I were joined on site by representatives from a handful of D shops. We had scheduled the meeting during one of the talks so that we could ensure we’d have a quiet spot for those who were participating remotely. Unfortunately, we had issues with Google Talk for one remote participant while others who were to participate via Skype were too busy to attend.

Skyping these meetings is better than nothing, but meeting face-to-face was a tremendously more efficient and enjoyable experience. We had productive discussions on several topics that garnered more participation than the Skype meetings do, where the discussions tend to be less animated. The company reps aired their issues, we talked about some future plans, and all went well. Most of the items discussed will benefit the community at large when they are finally realized, e.g. Bugzilla issues and new tooling.

I expect our quarterly meetings will become a regular sideline event at future DConfs.

Until next year…

I thoroughly enjoyed myself at DConf this year. Last year, I was too busy emceeing to have much fun. As Ethan discovered this year, there’s more to the emcee job than one might expect (and I would say he’s much more suited to it than I am). When I did it, I was worried about drinking in the evening and wanted to get in bed early each night, so I only fully participated in BeerConf the final night. This year, I had no such concerns, though I did leave early the second night to surprise my wife for dinner.

I hope that everyone at DConf 2019 enjoyed it as much as I did. I also hope that those who were unable to attend this year, especially those who have never attended a DConf, can make the trip next year no matter where in the world we end up. Just think, it’s only been a few weeks since the conference, but we should be talking about DConf 2020 in just five more months.

The countdown is on!

Human Resources in the D Ecosystem (or Resources, Resources, Resources)

In November of last year, I announced here that we were launching a Pull Request Manager campaign. We wanted to raise $3000 in three months as compensation for Nicholas Wilson to make a dent in the pull request queues of the core D projects. The community answered the call and Nicholas got to work. It was a successful run, so we decided to go another round.

About a month remains in the second round campaign, but donations have come in at a slower pace. Still, we’re confident the community will once again help us reach the finish line so we can compensate Nicholas for his time. We intend to launch a third round at some point in the not-too-distant future, but before we do that we’ve got some different fish to fry.

The Human Resource Share

In December 2018, the first Quarterly D Language Foundation meeting was held online. It came together at the prodding of the aforementioned Nicholas Wilson. Some well-known D shops—Dunhumby (Sociomantic), Funkwerk, WekaIO, and Symmetry Investments—were invited to send representatives to join Walter, Andrei, Ali Çehreli, Nicholas, and myself in a Skype call. Given that it was the inaugural meeting, the agenda was light. We primarily wanted to hear what the companies’ biggest D issues were at the time so that we could prioritize them in the work pipeline. However, we did raise one idea that we wanted the companies to consider for our benefit.

A persistent problem in the D ecosystem is a lack of available human resources to work on the issues that don’t fall into the realm of personal or corporate interests. By that I mean that volunteers tend to contribute where they have a personal interest and contributions from the companies tend to be aimed almost exclusively at areas that have a direct benefit to their projects. The result is that a large number of issues that do not fit into either category fall by the wayside. This is only to be expected and we aren’t complaining. What we are doing is trying to determine how to direct energy toward those neglected issues without the need for raising money.

So we asked the companies to consider a form of “human resource sharing”, the idea being that each company would periodically designate one employee to spend a day on the company dime working on D ecosystem tasks that don’t necessarily have a direct impact on the company’s interests. The representatives promised to take it back to their bosses and give us an answer at the next meeting.

In the interim, I wrote up a more concrete proposal that outlined two options for approaching it: a monthly rotation where each company takes turns doing the work, and a quarterly system where each company commits to completing at least one item on the task list per quarter. I asked the companies to provide us with their preference at our second quarterly meeting in March.

At the March meeting, we invited a few more companies to join us. Given that these are either in the startup phase or aren’t using D exclusively, I’ll play it safe and keep quiet about who they are for now. Overall, the response to the Human Resource Share was positive. Unfortunately, most of the companies are already short on human resources as it is and cannot commit to our quarterly scheme. However, one company did commit to starting immediately and another committed to providing work as they can. All of them committed to helping in other ways, which includes the provision of funds (see below), and hope to have the human resources to spare in the future.

To that end, we’ve set up the ecotasks repository to house our Ecosystem Task List. The list was initially envisioned as a collection of specific tasks, e.g. specific Bugzilla issues, but that makes it more difficult for each tasked worker to decide what to do. Instead, we’ve cobbled together a set of task groups. For now, that consists primarily of links to the GitHub Issues page for different projects and a request to “close as many issues as possible”. The idea is that workers can go to an issues page and work on solving those they can squeeze into their allotted time.

We’ve put this on GitHub not just as a means of transparency, but also because we would like to invite the entire community to participate. The list is loosely sorted by priority in that items higher on the list are considered higher priority than those lower on the list, but there’s no relative priority between specific tasks. The ordering is sure to change over time.

We ask that anyone working through the list to, at the start of the work session, open an issue and leave a comment indicating which item is being worked on. For example:

I’m working on the dub registry issues right now. Specifically, I plan to tackle issues #I, #J, and #K.

Then, at the end of the work session, close the issue with a note indicating what was accomplished.

If you have a little time to spare one weekend, please consider visiting the ecotasks repository and taking on one or two issues. Even better, challenge yourself to go through it once a month and see what you can accomplish. D depends on volunteer effort to thrive. We have a lot of it already, but we always need more. This is one of many ways to make an impact even if it isn’t an enjoyable or very visible one.

The Human Resource Fund

There are some tasks in the D ecosystem that no amount of cajoling and begging will get done because they’re too complex, too time consuming, require a specific skill set to properly complete, or all of the above. When the companies offered to throw money at us in place of human resources, that led us to a new idea.

We are now running a permanent fundraising campaign specifically aimed at solving the bigger issues. The Human Resource Fund for D Ecosystem Tasks is intended to grow and grow and grow. We’re currently in talks with some of the companies about how often and how much they can contribute toward it and in what amounts. We also invite the community at large to donate to it now and again.

Recently, Andrei mentioned in the forums that we need to put together a qualified team to complete the spec and implementation of shared. That’s an example of the sort of big issue we want to use this fund to solve. Donations small and large are equally welcome. The sooner we can get a nice pile built up, the sooner we can start prioritizing issues and finding the people to solve them.

For now, we want to focus on beefing this fund up a bit so we’re going to hold off temporarily on the next Pull Request Manager campaign, but we’ll definitely come back to that again before too long. Anyway, the current campaign is still in need of your attention!

Effecting Change

Every D user has different priorities and goals, different needs and desires. A full-featured IDE is important to one person but not even worth mentioning for another. One programmer expects to see a native D GUI, another is happy with bindings to an existing C or C++ library, and yet another has no need of a GUI at all. One person contributes to a certain D project, but never to any others, while another person has a different set they contribute to, or starts their own. Somewhere in the middle are the issues that are too boring or too complex, the issues that never rise to anyone’s attention or are considered undoable for whatever reason.

In the time I’ve been following and involved with D, I’ve seen the leadership try a number of different ways to drive energy toward some of these unsolved issues. What every approach they’ve tried has had in common is that they depend on the community. When you don’t have the human resources to do the job, you need the money to hire the human resources. When you don’t have the money, you need to ask for and rely upon the charity and goodwill of others. And if there’s no one with the bandwidth to continuously push the issue, fewer people step up. When the community doesn’t step up, then either someone on the core team has to (at the expense of time taken from their normal workload) or the issue languishes.

The two initiatives I’ve described above, the Human Resource Share and the Human Resource Fund, are the latest attempts to make things happen. Again, all contributions are welcome and appreciated! I don’t want this to come off as a complaint, because that’s not what is intended at all.

This is a call to arms! We’re asking members of the community to roll up their sleeves and do the dirty work they normally wouldn’t think to do, or even would prefer not to do. We’re asking for crowdsourced effort in solving problems that will make the D ecosystem better for all of us. A few dozen people spending an hour here or a weekend there will mean more issues closed and more members of the core team can stay focused more often on the work in their purview, which is another big win.

If you can’t help us out with your time, help us out with your money! The Human Resource fund will always need boosting. So, too, the General Fund, the current PR Manager campaign, and any other campaigns we launch in the future. You can also support us when you shop at Amazon by doing so via smile.amazon.com and selecting “D Language Foundation” as your supported charity. When you buy products marked “Eligible for AmazonSmile donation” through smile.amazon.com, the foundation will receive 0.5% of the purchase price. Finally, you’ll soon be able to support D through the DLang Swag Emporium, where you’ll be able to purchase D-themed t-shirts, coffee mugs, and more.

We’re always open to ideas on how to get more things done. If you have anything you’d like to suggest, bring it to the forums for community discussion or email me directly at aldacron@gmail.com.

Now, let’s make things happen!

DMD 2.085.0 and DConf 2019 News

Coinciding with news of a new release of DMD is news about DConf 2019 in London. From new GC options in DRuntime to free beers and free tours at DConf, we may as well kill two birds with one blog post!

Compiler news

The 2.085.0 release of DMD, the D reference compiler, is now ready for download. Among other things, this release sees support for 32-bit OS X removed, more support for interfacing with Objective-C, and big news on the garbage collection front. There’s also been some work on compatibility with the standard C++ library. In total, 2.085.0 represents 58 closed Bugzilla issues and the efforts of 49 contributors. See the changelog for the full details.

Interfacing with Objective-C

DMD has had limited support for binding with Objective-C for some time. This release expands that support to include classes, instance variables, and super calls.

Previously, binding with Objective-C classes required using D interfaces. No longer. Now, Objective-C classes can be declared directly as D classes. Decorate an Objective-C class with extern(Objective-C), make use of the @selector attribute on the methods, and away you go.

To better facilitate interaction between the two languages, such classes have slightly modified behavior. Any static and final methods in an extern(Objective-C) class are virtual. However, final methods still are forbidden from being overridden by subclasses. static methods are overridable.

extern (Objective-C)
class NSObject
{
    static NSObject alloc() @selector("alloc");
    NSObject init() @selector("init");
    void release() @selector("release");
}

extern (Objective-C)
class Foo : NSObject
{
    override static Foo alloc() @selector("alloc");
    override Foo init() @selector("init");

    int bar(int a) @selector("bar:")
    {
        return a;
    }
}

void main()
{
    auto foo = Foo.alloc.init;
    scope (exit) foo.release();

    assert(foo.bar(3) == 3);
}

It’s also now possible to declare instance variables in Objective-C classes and for a method in an Objective-C class to make a super call.

extern (Objective-C)
class NSObject
{
    void release() @selector("release");
}

extern (Objective-C)
class Foo : NSObject
{
    // instance variable
    int bar;

    int foo() @selector("foo")
    {
        return 3;
    }

    int getBar() @selector("getBar")
    {
        return bar;
    }
}

extern (Objective-C)
class Bar : Foo
{
    static Bar alloc() @selector("alloc");
    Bar init() @selector("init");

    override int foo() @selector("foo")
    {
        // super call
        return super.foo() + 1;
    }
}

New GC stuff

Perhaps the biggest of the GC news items is that DRuntime now ships with a precise garbage collector. This can be enabled on any executable compiled and linked against the latest DRuntime by passing the runtime option --DRT-gcopt=gc:precise. To be clear, this is not a DMD compiler option. Read the documentation on the precise GC for more info.

Another new GC configuration option controls the behavior of the GC at program termination. Currently, the GC runs a collection at termination. This is to present the opportunity to finalize any live objects still holding on to resources that might affect the system state. However, this doesn’t guarantee all objects will be finalized as roots may still exist, nor is the need for it very common, so it’s often just a waste of time. As such, a new cleanup option allows the user of a D program to specify three possible approaches to GC clean up at program termination:

collect: the default, current, behavior for backward compatibility
none: do no cleanup at all
finalize: unconditionally finalize all live objects

This can be passed on the command line of a program compiled and linked against DRuntime as, e.g. --DRT-gcopt=cleanup:finalize.

All DRuntime options, including the two new ones, can be set up in code rather than being passed on the command line by declaring and initializing an array of strings called rt_options. It must be both extern(C) and __gshared:

extern(C) __gshared string[] rt_options = ["gcopt=gc:precise cleanup:none"];

See the documentation on configuring the garbage collector for more GC options.

Additional GC-related enhancements include programmatic access to GC profiling statistics and a new GC registry that allows user-supplied GCs to be linked with the runtime (see the documentation for details).

Standard C++

There are two enhancements to D’s C++ interface in this release. The first is found in the new DRuntime module, core.stdcpp.new_. This provides access to the global C++ new and delete operators so that D programs can allocate from the C++ heap. The second is the new core.stdcpp.allocator module, which exposes the std::allocator<T> class of C++ as a foundation for binding to the STL container types that allocate.

DConf 2019 news

There are two interesting perks for conference goers this year.

The nightly gathering spot

We now have an “official” gathering spot. Usually at DConf, we pick an “official” hotel where the D Language Foundation folks and many attendees stay, but where a number of conference goers gather in the evenings after dinner. This year, a number of factors made it difficult to pick a reasonable spot, so we opted for something different.

There’s a cozy little pub around the corner from the venue, the Prince Arthur, that has a nice room on the second floor available for reservation. There’s a limit on how many bodies we can pack in there at once, but folks generally come and go throughout the evening anyway. Any overflow can head downstairs to the public area. We’ve got the room May 8, 9, and 10.

Additionally, we’ll be offering a couple of free rounds each night courtesy of Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America. Free drinks in a cozy backstreet London pub sounds like a great way to pass the time!

Check out the DConf venue page for details about the Prince Arthur and how to get there.

A free tour by Joolz Guides

Julian McDonnell of Joolz Guides will be taking some DConf registrants on a guided walk May 6 and 7. If you’ve never seen his YouTube channel, we recommend it. His video guides are quirky, informative, and fun.

This is available for free to all registrants, but space is limited! When you register for DConf, you’ll receive information on how to reserve your spot. We’ve arranged to have the tours in the mid-afternoon on both days so that folks arriving in the morning will have a chance to participate. This is a walking tour that will last somewhere between 3 – 4 hours, so be sure to wear comfortable shoes.

The current plan is to start at Temple Station and end at London Bridge. We hope you join us!

Deadlines

The DConf submission deadline of March 10 is just around the corner. Now’s the time to send in your proposal for a talk, demo, panel or research report. See the DConf 2019 homepage for submission guidelines and selection criteria. And remember, speakers are eligible for reimbursement of travel and accommodation expenses.

The early-bird registration deadline of March 17 is fast approaching. Register now to take advantage of the 15% discount!

DConf 2019 Early-Bird Registration Opens (and Other News)

I’ve got a few big news items for you today, the biggest being one I’ve been eagerly awaiting: early-bird registration for DConf 2019 London is now open!

Early-bird Registrations…

…are now open!

We’re very fortunate, thanks to the generosity of Symmetry Investments, to be able to keep the normal registration fee to our standard $400 this year. Like last year, the early-bird discount is once again 15%, so register before March 17, 24:00 AOE, and you’ll only pay $340. Unfortunately, unlike past editions of DConf, we’re required to charge a VAT of 20% this year, so the early-bird rate with tax is $408 and the regular registration will be $480 with tax. The GBP value of the VAT is listed alongside the price on the registration page and will be updated when the average monthly exchange rate changes.

Currently, you’ll find two options for payment on the registration page: Flipcause and PayPal. Those of you who have been following the latest goings on will know that we’re using Flipcause to create donation campaigns. They also provide support to configure campaigns for events like DConf, allowing us to keep as much as possible coming into one place. In the long run, this will be more efficient for us than accepting money through other services, so if you aren’t paying with a PayPal balance for your DConf registration, we ask that you please choose the Flipcause option.

You’ll also find the DConf campaign listed in our Campaign Menu, which is accessible from the big Donate Now button in this blog’s sidebar as well as from the D Language Foundation’s donation page. In the past, we have supported Eventbrite as a payment option, but have not yet decided if we will do so this year.

Invited Keynote Speaker

I’m also happy to announce that Laeeth Isharc has accepted our invitation to be a keynote speaker at DConf 2019.

Every year, Walter and Andrei are joined by an invited keynote speaker to open each of the three presentation days of the conference. Sometimes, the speaker is from outside of the D community for a different perspective (Scott Meyers was the invited keynote speaker at DConfs 2014 and 2017, and Martin Odersky was the invited keynote speaker last year). This year, offering the invitation to Laeeth was a no-brainer.

Not only is Laeeth responsible for bringing DConf 2019 to London under the sponsorship of Symmetry Investments, he’s also an enthusiastic supporter of the D programming language. He hires D programmers, sponsors open-source D projects, initiated the Symmetry Autumn of Code (SAoC), and can be found in various forums around the internet answering questions about D. Despite all of that, he’s never spoken at a DConf. We can’t wait to hear what he has to say!

The SAoC Finalist

Three programmers started the Symmetry Autumn of Code. Each participant was to complete three milestones, each of one-month duration, and would receive $1000 upon the successful completion of each. After a final month of clean-up work (whatever was required by each project), one participant was to be selected for a final $1000 payment and a free pass to DConf 2019, including travel and lodging.

One participant was unable to continue after the first milestone. The other two—Francesco Mecca, whose project was porting Leandro Lucarella’s old D1 forking GC to DRuntime, and Francesco Galla, whose project was adding HTTP/2 support to vibe-http—were able to see the event through to the end. Both did some excellent work on their chosen projects, but only one would be selected for the final prize.

I can now announce that congratulations are in order for Francesco Galla! He’ll be receiving the final payment and the trip to DConf 2019. As it turns out, he and the other Francesco happen to be friends. They had an agreement beforehand that the finalist would use the extra $1000 to pay for the other to attend DConf. And we’ve been informed that we’ll be fortunate enough to meet both of them in London!

We’ll also be hearing from Francesco Mecca before then, as he has agreed to write about his project for this blog. Francesco Galla will either write a blog post or, depending on how the conference schedule comes together, give a presentation about his project at DConf (possibly both!). Keep an ear open for the announcements.

The New Fundraiser

The PR Manager Campaign was a tremendous success. Not only did we meet our goal well before the deadline, but Nicholas Wilson has done a great job cleaning up the pull request queues. We will continue that campaign for another quarter, starting next month.

In the meantime, we’re raising $2000 for a new server for the D Forums. There are two reasons we’ve selected this as our next target.

First, Vladimir Panteleev has been paying for the server for the D Forums (and his other D services) out of his pocket for years. It’s time we put a stop to that. The forums are a crucial part of the D programming language community and it shouldn’t be up to one person to pay the bills.

Second, the forums have been experiencing performance issues at an increasing frequency over the past several months. Among the possible solutions that Vladimir has identified to improve this state of things, moving to better hardware is a big one. If ever there was a time for the community to take over the server bills, it’s now.

So we encourage you to donate to the cause! Helping us meet our $2000 goal will cover a new server for the forums and provide a cushion for any incidental expenses. Vladimir has graciously declined to accept any money from the D Language Foundation for the work he does in actually maintaining and improving the forums, so we’d like to draw your attention to his Patreon account, where you can more broadly support the open-source work he does.

We thank Vladimir for all the time and money he’s put into this over the years, and thank you in advance for your donations!

Last Year In D

2018 was one of the biggest years in D we’ve had for a while. It was the first complete year that DMD stuck to a steady release schedule. Over the course of the year, the language got new features and cruft cleanup. The compiler even got some new user-facing features. At the same time, the community-at-large continued to evolve the surrounding ecosystem.

Release Rundown

The first DMD release of the year was version 2.078 on January 1. It set the tone for much of the year, including more support for a stripped-down runtime for -betterC mode, and a deprecation change in arithmetic rules.

The next major release came out in March, and I personally found it to be the most exciting release in a couple of years because it came with improved error messages – notably, calling out the specific argument to a function that mismatched a type (though I will note there is still a lot of room for further improvement!). Moreover, this release introduced DMD’s -i flag, which automatically includes imported modules and has proven to be a major convenience to me over the year.

Meanwhile, more stripped-down runtime support and general language cleanup was included in the release. March also introduced experimental @nogc exception throwing (as proposed in DIP1008). This release also changed the garbage collector to be lazily initialized, part of the effort to make things cheaper and pay-as-you-go.

March was also the first time DMD on Windows could do a total build of a 64-bit program without Visual Studio installed because it bundled the LLVM linker.

Keeping to the release schedule, May and July brought us new major versions, which focused on language cleanup, with a lot of deprecations. There was a #dbugfix campaign over the year, and it brought a fix in May’s release: allowing the pow operator (^^) and several std.math functions to be used at compile time. July’s release brought a change in contract syntax, based on the proposal in DIP 1009, allowing small expressions instead of requiring whole blocks.

Version 2.082, in September, finally brought me something I have wanted for a long time: User Defined Attributes on enum members and function parameters, as well as the ability to disable DRuntime’s exception trapping via the --DRT-trapExceptions=0 runtime command-line switch, which allows for easier debugging of uncaught exceptions. Moreover, with this release the D Language Foundation began digitally signing the Windows binary releases, which has helped smooth out the end-user experience when installing and running DMD. It should continue to help solve the false-positive problem we have seen with some virus scanners.

At the end of the year, version 2.083 saw extern(C++) get a big improvement its users have been waiting for: namespaces without scopes, which makes C++ interoperability and code organization a lot easier. Work on making the C++ standard library accessible from D has been progressing throughout the year.

Overall, the year brought a lot of awaited improvements. D is more usable in various runtime library situations (even Phobos has some -betterC support, like RefCounted and Tuple!). The language had over ten deprecations of old cruft like comma expressions, read-modify-write on shared, comma expressions, class allocators (did you even know D still had class allocators? To be honest, I thought they were formally deprecated years ago, but it was actually 2018 when the change officially happened!), and more.

Debugging got better, with the uncaught exception switch, but also allowing the debug statement to escape more attribute restrictions, better error messages out of the compiler, and a -verrors=context switch to show the line right in the message. -betterC debugging aids also improved, with the C assert function being a possibility. I’ll also note that 2019 is already moving further—new assert printing code was merged just recently; we can choose how to control them and whether to use D or C facilities!

Of course, the library continued to get better range support and its support for @nogc and -betterC has grown as well.

And as a fun fact, DMD is now 98% ported to D, with another major part converted over the year.

The D Community

More companies invested in D in 2018. Hosted by QA Systems, DConf 2018 was held in Munich, Germany, the first time DConf has been to that city (and the third time in Germany, after taking place in Berlin in 2016 and 2017). Symmetry Investments sponsored the successful Symmetry Autumn of Code, funding three students to work on D-related projects.

run.dlang.io came out at the end of 2017 and grew in popularity throughout 2018, becoming the new standard for running D code online, including from the dlang.org homepage. It even supports a whitelist of third-party libraries.

The dlang-tour website gained a few new translations from the community, including Vietnamese, Portugese, French, Turkish, German, and Ukrainian.

The D Language Foundation was busy in 2018 as well. They received over $5000 on Open Collective, $3000 of which was earmarked to support development of the code-d VS Code plugin and the language server that drives it. With a successful campaign launched through Flipcause, the DLF was able to hire a pull request manager for three months. Donations through all platforms allowed them to fund some outreach efforts as well as student work via scholarships. To increase visibility, they submitted a history of D paper to the Fourth ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference.

Over 2,500 pull results have now been merged by the dlang-bot on GitHub, and the Project Tester has now gained ₅₀ projects that it tests on every PR to give real-world data on compiler regressions and the impact of breakages.

DIP 1014, “Hooking D’s struct move semantics”, was also accepted. It will open some doors that were closed by design in old D, but that many developers had found limiting. Before, the compiler could move your structs whenever it wanted. Now, it will be hookable to give more control to the programmer and avoid a nasty case of bugs.

I opened up my documentation generation website at dpldocs.info to all DUB projects this year, and upstream linked to it, encouraging D library authors to better document their libraries and allowing users to better evaluate the libraries before downloading them.

On Twitter, @dlang_ng was started and has gained about 200 followers. All announcement topics from the Announce forum (aka the digitalmars.D.announce newsgroup) are tweeted out here.

2018 also saw community announcements of the autowrap and dpp projects. autowrap automatically wraps existing D code to be used from other environments, while dpp runs a C pre-processor over D code to make it possible to use C headers, unmodified, macros and all, directly in D. These two projects show the community’s desire to integrate D more fully into existing codebases and projects.

Of course, not all is perfect in the D development community, including a few areas where this author would like to see improvement.

The most +1-ed PR on DMD, a string interpolation implementation (and a very elegant approach in this writer’s opinion), remains open and of uncertain status, despite a renewed effort to get it merged in December. Similarly, the State of D 2018 Survey identified several areas for improvement. Very few of these came to pass in 2018, though some progress was made. We deprecated some cruft, but auto-decoding, one of the top-five disliked Phobos features in the survey and one often derided in the forums, remains in place. We are still using Bugzilla, which got an average of 3.27 satisfaction rating out of a possible 5 stars in the survey. We achieved fewer regressions, but added even more to the attribute bloat. We have an official blog and the annual DConf, but the D Language Foundation’s inner workings are still opaque.

It would be great if some of these weak points are addressed among the improvements and changes in 2019.

The DUB Package Manager

The code.dlang.org website received some criticism in 2017, and it was addressed in 2018. The site got a new front page with usage statistics and project ranking based on GitHub info. The DUB program itself got faster and more stable, no longer going online on every run to check for updates, and achieving better online uptime.

The Mir library, which has algorithms, collections, and more written to be 100% -betterC compatible (which, of course, means it also works in all other D environments, too), is now the fifth-most popular package on the DUB registry, while the unit testing library unit-threaded takes the third-place slot. First, second, and fourth are all related to vibe.d, which is the project DUB was originally created to support.

Conclusion

2018 was a really good year for D. There is still much work to do, but worthwhile developments in all facets of the language and ecosystem gave me renewed excitement going into 2019. I expect that March 2019 release of D is going to be another big step toward improving the best programming language we have on Earth today!

Adam Ruppe is the author of D Cookbook and maintainer of This Week in D. Modules from his freely available arsd package are used throughout the D community. He is also known for his legendary DConf 2014 presentation.

Addendum

There were a total of 166 contributors listed on the DMD changelog in 2018. Special thanks to them and to all the others in the D community who flesh out the ecosystem and make our favorite programming language!

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Adam D. Ruppe
Alexandru Caciulescu
Alexandru Jercaianu
Alexandru ermicioi
Alexibu
Ali Akhtarzada
Ali Çehreli
Andrei Alexandrescu
Andrei-Cristian VASILE (87585)
Andrey Penechko
Andy Smith
Aravinda VK
Arun Chandrasekaran
Atila Neves
BBasile
Basile Burg
Bastiaan Veelo
Benoit Rostykus
Brad Roberts
Brian Schott
Carsten Schlote
Chris Coutinho
Daniel Kozak
Dashster
David Bennett
David Gileadi
David Nadlinger
Denis Feklushkin
Diederik de Groot
Dmitry Olshansky
Dragos Carp
Duncan Paterson
Eduard Staniloiu
Elias Batek
Erik van Velzen
Eugen Wissner
FeepingCreature
GabyForceQ
Giles Bathgate
GoaLitiuM
Greg V
H. S. Teoh
Harry T. Vennik
Hiroki Noda
Héctor Barreras Almarcha [Dechcaudron]
Iain Buclaw
Ilya Yaroshenko
Ionut
Jack Stouffer
Jacob Carlborg
Jan Jurzitza
Jean-Louis Leroy
JinShil
Joakim Noah
Johan Engelen
Johannes Loher
Johannes Pfau
John Belmonte
John Colvin
Jon Degenhardt
Jonathan M Davis
Jonathan Marler
Jordi Sayol
Joseph Rushton Wakeling
Kai Nacke
Kevin De Keyser
Kotet
Laeeth Isharc
Lance Bachmeier
Leandro Lucarella
LemonBoy
Lucia Mcojocaru
Luís Marques
Manu Evans
Manuel Maier
Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer
Martin Kinkelin
Martin Krejcirik
Martin Nowak
Mathias Baumann
Mathias Lang
Mathis Beer
MetaLang
Michael Parker
Mihails Strasuns
Mike Franklin
Mike Parker
Márcio Martins
Nathan Sashihara
Nemanja Boric
Nicholas Lindsay Wilson
Nicholas Wilson
Nick Treleaven
Oleg Nykytenko
Patrick Schlüter
Paul Backus
Per Nordlöw
Petar Kirov
Pjotr Prins
Pradeep Gowda
Quirin F. Schroll
Radosław Rusiniak
Radu Racariu
Rainer Schuetze
Razvan Nitu
Remi Thebault
Robert burner Schadek
Roman Chistokhodov
Ryan David Sheasby
Ryan Frame
Sebastian Wilzbach
Simen Kjærås
Simon Naarmann
Spoov
Stanislav Blinov
Stefan Koch
Steven Schveighoffer
Superstar64
Temtaime
Tero Hänninen
Thibaut CHARLES
Thomas Mader
Timon Gehr
Timoses
Timothee Cour
Tomáš Chaloupka
Tyler Knott
Unknown
Vlad Vitan
Vladimir Panteleev
Walter Bright
Yannick Koechlin
Yuxuan Shui
Zach Tollen
Zevenberge
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abaga129
byebye
carblue
cedretaber
crimaniak
devel
deviator
dhasenan
dmdw64
drug007
dukc
gapdan
glitchbunny
growlercab
jercaianu
jmh530
kinke
leitimmel
look-at-me
n8sh
rracariu
shoo
shove70
skl131313
thaven
viktor
wazar
olframw
yashikno
Ľudovít Lučenič

DConf 2019: Shepherd’s Pie Edition

On behalf of the D Language Foundation and Symmetry Investments, I’m excited to announce that we’re heading to London for DConf 2019!

From May 8 – 11, 2019, we’ll be hosting our traditional three days of talks, capped off with the 3rd annual DConf Hackathon, in an area packed full with tech companies, known as East London Tech City. We’ve secured facilities at 99 City Road, a conference space owned and operated by Inmarsat, a global satellite communications firm. They’ve got a great setup, with equipment geared specifically toward tech conferences. Anyone sitting in the back of the room shouldn’t need to worry about reading code samples on the screen!

Image by Jack Torcello – https://www.flickr.com/photos/stonechat/6772642995/, CC BY 3.0, Link

The venue is located in a convenient spot, right on the “Silicon Roundabout” outside the Old Street tube station. For those who intend to schedule some time for sightseeing before or after the conference, the area is a nice walk or a short tube ride from some iconic London attractions, like the Museum of London, the Tower of London (in this handy PDF showing walking times between tube stations, it’s roughly a 30 minute walk from Old Street to Tower Hill), and just a handful of stops away from all the famous places in the City of Westminster (the Transport For London tube page has several useful maps and guides).

Several hotels are located within walking distance, some of which offer discounts for conference attendees (details will be provided to registrants). Prices vary, of course, but there are some budget hotels nearby for the price conscious (like me!). We’ll update the conference venue page in the coming days with some suggestions. We have yet to select an “official” hotel for post-conference gathering, but I hope to post that on the venue page soon.

Some details remain to be worked out as we’re still deep in the planning stage. Will the Hackathon be open to the public? Will we kick it off with a talk like last time? It’s still too early to say. It’s also too soon to announce any deadlines or registration fees. I’ve been chomping at the bit just to make the announcement that we’re going to London, but I wanted to wait until we had a venue confirmed. Now that we have, and with Christmas just a few days away, I couldn’t contain myself any longer! We’ll update the conference page and make announcements in the forums as we finalize the details. Keep an eye on @D_Programming and #dconf for real-time news.

A special thanks to Laeeth Isharc and our friends at Symmetry Investments for offering to sponsor and host DConf 2019. They’re doing all the leg work to put it together and we wouldn’t be going to London without them. And to everyone in the D community, please have very safe and Happy Holidays!

Updates in D Land

As we encroach upon the end of 2018, a recent Reddit thread wishing D a happy 17th birthday reminded me how far the language has come since I first stumbled upon it in 2003. Many of the steps along the way were powered by the energy of users who had little incentive to contribute beyond personal interest. And here we are, all these years later, still moving forward.

There are a number of current and upcoming happenings that will play a role in keeping that progress going. In this post, I’d like to remind you, update you, or inform you about some of them.

The Pull Request Manager Campaign

If you haven’t heard, the D Language Foundation has hired a pull request manager, to be paid out of a pool of donations. This is our first major fundraising campaign through Flipcause. I’m happy to report that it’s going well. As I write, we’ve raised $1,864 of our $3,000 target in 66 days thanks to the kindness of 30 supporters. If you’d like to support us in this cause, click on the campaign card.

You can access our full campaign menu at any time via the “Donate Now” button in the sidebar here on the blog. A pull request has also been submitted to integrate the menu into dlang.org’s donation page. Currently, we only have two campaigns (this one and the General Fund) but any future campaigns will be accessible through those menus.

Symmetry Autumn of Code

Earlier this year, Symmetry Investments partnered with the D Language Foundation to sponsor the Symmetry Autumn of Code (SAoC). Three participants were selected to work on D-related projects over the course of four months, with milestones to mark their progress. If you haven’t heard of it or had forgotten, you can read the details on the SAoC page here at the blog.

Unfortunately, one participant was unable to continue after the first milestone. The other two, whom we have come to refer to as the two Francescos, have each successfully completed three milestones and are in the home stretch, aiming for that final payment and free trip to DConf 2019.

Francesco Mecca is working on porting an old D1 GC to modern D, and Francesco Galla’ is busy adding HTTP/2 support the vibe-http library. Both have made significant progress and are on track to a successful SAoC. Read more about their projects in my previous SAoC update.

DIP Updates

I’ve received partial feedback on a decision regarding DIP 1013 (The Deprecation Process) and expect to hear the final verdict soon. As soon as I do, I’ll move Manu’s DIP 1016 (ref T accepts r-values) into the Formal Assessment stage for Walter and Andrei to consider.

I had intended to move Razvan’s Copy Constructor DIP into Community Review by now, as that is a high priority for Walter and Andrei. However, he’s been working out some more details so it’s not quite yet ready. So as not to hold up the process any longer, I’ll be starting Community Review for one of the other DIPs in the PR queue at the end of this week. When the Copy Constructor DIP is ready, I’ll run its review in parallel.

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2019

At the end of last month, I announced in the forums that we’re ramping up for GSoC 2019. I seeded our Wiki page with two potential project ideas to get us started. So far, only one additional idea has been added and no one has contacted me about participating as a student or a mentor.

It’s been a while since we were last accepted into GSoC and we’d very much like to get into it this time. To do so, we need more project ideas, students to execute them, and mentors to provide guidance to the students. If you’re looking for another way to contribute to the D community, this is a great way to do so. Adding project ideas costs little beyond the time it takes to add the details to the Wiki and, if you are lacking in ideas already dying to escape the confines of your neurocranium, the time it takes to brainstorm something. Student and mentor participation is a more significant commitment, but it’s also a lot more rewarding. If you’re interested, tell me at aldacron@gmail.com.

DConf 2019

Finally, I’m happy to announce… Just kidding. I can’t announce anything yet about DConf 2019, but I hope to be able to soon. What I can say with certainty is that in 2019, DConf will be where DConf has never gone before. We’re currently working out some details with an eye toward making 2019 a big year for DConf.

I’m really excited about it and eager to let everyone know. I’ll do so as soon as I’m able. Watch this space!

The New Fundraising Campaign

On January 23, 2011, Walter announced that development of the core D projects had moved to GitHub. It’s somewhat entertaining to go through the thread and realize that it’s almost entirely about people coming to terms with using git, a reminder that there was a time when git was still relatively young and had yet to dominate the source control market.

The move to GitHub has since been cited by both Walter and Andrei as a big win, thanks to a subsequent increase in contributions. It was smooth sailing for quite some time, but eventually some grumbling began to be heard below the surface. Pull Requests (PRs) were being ignored. Reviews weren’t happening fast enough. The grumbling grew louder. There were long communication delays. PRs were sometimes closed by frustrated contributors, demotivated and unwilling to contribute further.

The oldest open PR in the DMD queue as I write is dated June 10, 2013. If we dig into it, we see that it was ultimately done in by a break in communication. The contributor was asking for more feedback, then there was silence for nine months. Six months later, when asked to rebase, the contributor no longer had time for it. A year and a half.

There are other reasons why PRs can stall, but in the end many of them have one thing in common: there’s no one pushing all parties involved toward a resolution. There’s no one following up every few days to make sure communication hasn’t broken down, or that any action that must be taken is followed through. Everyone involved in maintaining the PR queue has other roles and responsibilities both inside and outside of D development, but none of them have the bandwidth to devote to regular PR management.

We have had people step up and try to revive old PRs. We have seen some of them closed or merged. But there are some really challenging or time-consuming PRs in the list. The one linked above, for example. The last comment is from Sebastian Wilzbach in March of this year, who points out that it will be difficult to revive because it’s based on the old C++ code base. So who has the motivation to get it done?

I promised in the forums that I would soon be launching targeted funding campaigns. This seems like an excellent place to start.

Fostering an environment that encourages more contributions benefits everyone who uses D. The pool of people in the D community who have the skill and knowledge necessary to manage those contributions is small. If they had the time, we wouldn’t have this problem. A community effort to compensate one of them to make more time for it seems a just cause.

The D Language Foundation is asking the community as a whole to contribute to a fund to pay a part-time PR manager $1,000 per month for a period of three months, from November 15 to February 14. The manager will be paid the full amount after February 14, in one lump sum. At that time, we’ll evaluate our progress and decide whether to proceed with another three-month campaign.

We’ve already roped someone in who’s willing to do the job. Nicholas Wilson has been rummaging around the PR queue lately, trying to get merged those he has an immediate interest in. He’s also shown an interest in improving the D development process as a whole. That, and the fact that he said yes, makes him an ideal candidate for the role.

He’ll have two primary goals: preventing active PRs from becoming stale, and reviving PRs that have gone dormant. He’ll also be looking into open Bugzilla issues when he’s got some time to fill. He’ll have the weight of the Foundation behind his finger when he pokes it in the shoulder of anyone who is being unresponsive (and that includes everyone on the core team). Where he is unable to merge a PR himself, he’ll contact the people he needs to make it happen.

Click on the campaign card below and you’ll be taken to the campaign page. Our target is $3,000 by February, 14. If we exceed that goal, the overage will go toward the next three-month cycle should we continue. If we decide not to continue, overage will go to the General Fund.

Note that there are options for recurring donations that go beyond the campaign period. All donations through any campaign we launch through Flipcause go to the D Language Foundation’s account. In other words, they aren’t tied specifically to a single campaign. If you choose to initiate a recurring donation through any of our campaigns, you’ll be helping us meet our goal for that campaign and, once the campaign ends, your donations will go toward our general fund. If you do set up a monthly or quarterly donation, leave a note if you want to continue putting it toward paying the PR manager and we’ll credit it toward future PR manager campaigns.

When you’re viewing the blog on a desktop system, you’ll be able to see all of our active campaigns by clicking on the Donate Now button that I’ve added to the sidebar. Of course, the other donation options that have always been supported are still available from the donation page, accessible through the menu bar throughout dlang.org.

Thanks to Nicholas for agreeing to take on this job, and thanks in advance to everyone who supports us in getting it done!

Symmetry Autumn of Code is Underway

Earlier this year, Laeeth Isharc brought an idea to the D Foundation for Symmetry Investments to sponsor a summer of code. He was eager to provide a few motivated individuals the incentive to get some great work done for D and the D community. Sporadic email discussions preceded some chatting at DConf 2018 Munich and the idea subsequently began to pick up steam. By the time the details were sketched out, it had transformed into the Symmetry Autumn of Code.

The SAoC projects

Eight applicants submitted their resumes and project proposals for three slots. Nearly all of the proposals were taken from the SAoC suggestions page at the D Wiki. Given the limited window, the selection process went fairly quick. Of the three selected, two had mentors attached. It took a little while to find a mentor for the third selection, so we extended the milestone deadline for that participant. Now I can happily say that all three are well underway.

A fork-based concurrent GC for DRuntime

Francesco Mecca proposed this project. The goal is to take Leandro Lucarella’s original D1 fork-based GC, port it to D2, adapt it to DRuntime’s GC interface, and culminate with a pull request for DRuntime to present the work and open discussion. Leandro agreed to mentor this project and is working with Francesco to develop a test suite that the port must pass as part of Milestone 2. They have also included documentation in their milestone list, which is good news.

vibe.d HTTP/2 implementation

This one came from Francesco Galla, who is currently pursuing a MSc in Network and Security. The goal here is to enhance the vibe-http library to support HTTP/2. Fittingly, Sönke Ludwig, the maintainer of vibe.d, agreed to mentor the project, but requested someone to share the load due to his schedule. Sebastian Wilzbach stepped up as co-mentor.

This project involves rewriting the current HTTP/1 API, ensuring it works as expected, then incrementally adding support for HTTP/2. Portions of the rewrite were already completed before SAoC came along, but had not yet been tested. As such, testing and bug fixing will be a significant portion of the first milestone.

Porting the Mago debugger to D

This project was proposed by László Szerémi. He’s a heavy user of debuggers in D and wants to see the situation improved. He believes that porting the Mago debugger to D is a major step in that direction. His first two milestones are concerned with translating, testing, and bug fixing. To cap off the SAoC event, he intends to get a GUI frontend up and running with some basic features.

László had no mentor when he applied, and no one had specifically volunteered to mentor any debugger projects, so we put out a call in the forums and I reached out directly to a few people. In the end, Stefan Koch agreed to take it on.

SAoC is not the end

I know that one of the goals Laeeth had behind his initial suggestion for this event was to enhance the D ecosystem. None of the selected projects are simple, one-shot tasks. These are projects which will all require attention, care, and effort beyond SAoC. The participants are getting them started and we hope they’ll continue to maintain them for some time to come, but in the end, these are projects for the community. When SAoC 2018 is behind us, it will ultimately be up to the community to determine if the projects live long and prosper or die young.

I’ll post more about SAoC and the participants as the event goes on. We wish them the best in meeting their milestones!