Re: [PROPOSAL] Builder, a build system integration for Emacs

[Po Lu]

Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org> writes:

> Your claim that Rust is not backward compatible being wrong, you now

It's not.  The Linux kernel, for example, requires a ``nightly'' Rust
compiler for its Rust code.  To add insult to injury, that code does not
compile with GCC.

> suggest that it should be forward compatible as well?  It isn't, of
> course, otherwise the language would be frozen.

We are debating how _stable_ the language is, and backwards
compatibility is just one aspect.

Standard C is remarkably stable; embarassments such as the soon-to-be
included ``generic'' string functions aside, what has compiled in the
future will likely compile in the fast as well, and vice versa.

I think that the same could not be said for any other widely available
language.

> And why would compiling recent programs with old versions of the
> compiler be useful, when all you have to do is to install a more
> recent version of the compiler?

Because there are systems which are not supported by newer compilers.
Each new compiler is also slower than previous ones, and uses more
memory.