Backwards compatibility and release 1.0

[email protected] (Richard Hainsworth)
Newsgroups perl.perl6.language
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Following on the :D not :D thread, something odd stuck out.

On 10/13/2015 03:17 PM, Moritz Lenz wrote:
<snip>
>
> But hopefully none of them breaking backwards compatibility on such a 
> large scale. The last few backwards incompatible changes still cause 
> pain in the ecosystem. We have 390+ modules, and hand-waving away all 
> trouble of maintaining them seems a bit lofty.
<snip>

Surely, the idea of keeping the release number below 1.0 is to warn 
early adopter developers that code is subject to change and thus in need 
of maintenance?

Seems strange that after so long and "Christmas" is finally coming up 
that Rakudo 1.0 is going to be associated with modules that do not 
comply with the "standard". So if :D is the default specified by the 
standards, then all modules should be expected to conform to that 
standard when V1.0 comes out.

It does not matter really what the standard actually is, :D or not, so 
long as what is defined to be the standard is adhered to. Perl6 gives 
huge flexibility to developers to change standard for themselves, but 
surely there should be some common 'starting' ground, and modules for 
general use should adhere to it.

When the language and implementation were being co-developed, it was 
reasonable to expect that different modules would have different states 
of compliance. But surely V1.0 is a different sort of milestone?

'Hand-waving' all the trouble of maintaining the modules surely is not 
the issue. Ensuring that the modules comply with the standard set for 
Perl6 as implemented by Rakudo V1.0 is a reasonable expectation for 
anyone using the Rakudo version of Perl6 going forward.

Even if there is an argument that I have missed in the above about the 
need for modules to adhere to the standard prescribed by the Perl6, 
would it not be in the interests of PR around Perl6 for the very first 
V1.0 implementation to be accompanied by modules that have been brought 
as close to the standard as possible? These modules will help future 
developers to understand how to use the language.
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