[swift-evolution] [Swift 4] Organizing source stability

[Jacob Bandes-Storch]

Chris writes:

> - *Source stability features: *These should be relatively small, but
> important.  For example, we need a “-std=swift3” sort of compiler flag.  We
> may also add a way to conditionally enable larger efforts that are under
> development but not yet stable - in order to make it easier to experiment
> with them.



I am curious whether the team has thoughts on how to organize the compiler
codebase in such a way that new features can be added, and possibly
source-breaking changes made, while still keeping the old functionality
around.

Are any obvious areas that will need refactoring to make this feasible?
(Perhaps they could be turned into StarterBugs.)

How many versions back would the compiler be expected to support? Should
the Swift 5 compiler still support Swift 3 code?
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