"Thorsten Ottosen" <nesotto@cs.auc.dk> wrote in message news:d4la6g$91f$1@sea.gmane.org...
"Beman Dawes" <bdawes@acm.org> wrote in message news:d4k44t$9b9$1@sea.gmane.org... | | "Thorsten Ottosen" <nesotto@cs.auc.dk> wrote in message | news:d4gi2c$2jd$1@sea.gmane.org... | | > In Lillehammer we rejected a policy-based smart pointer... | | That isn't what happened. The committee's wiki describes the LWG's position: | | "No support for a policy-based framework at this time. This is a refinement | of Loki, but, while Loki is in use, this refinement isn't. We'll consider | such a proposal later, if there is widespread practice and strong arguments | for it." | | "No support ... at this time." is very different from rejection.
maybe, I didn't mention why it was "rejected" but I don't see any conceptual difference; I strongly encourage people to not write a proposal before they know the committee are willing to accept it.
The LWG is never willing to say for sure they will accept a proposal until after they have seen it. And most proposals have to be revised and resubmitted several times before acceptance. Even a slam-dunk proposal, like hoisting C99 stuff into TR1,wasn't accepted until the proposal was actually delivered. The most you can expect from the LWG is a straw vote that they are "interested" in seeing a proposal. You always have to supply the actual proposal before they will accept it. And even then, there are no sure bets. Several components (dynarray, etc.) were voted into the standard (by the full committee, not just the LWG), edited into the document, and then finally removed because the STL proposal surfaced and was deemed so superior as to make the pain of removing components worthwhile.
I see it like this: we are very limited in resources in the library working group and we want to focus on libraries that can be used by as many users as possible.
Few would argue with that. The argument starts when a particular proposal is seen as widely useful by some LWG members, and less useful by others.
And that means a policy-based smart pointer is probably not going into the standard.
Not into C++0x, but TR2? TR3? Remember that some of the stuff the committee is asking for as high priority now (like threads and networking) were considered "no, never" and "over my dead body" a few years ago. Committee membership changes over time, and attitudes of long-time members change, too. What users ask for changes. Proposals mature.
I think the comments on the wiki underestimates the objection towards the proposal; When Andrei presented it in Seatle, he was left with the feeling that people really liked the idea; so Dave wrote the proposal only to get it "put on hold". A lot of waisted work IMO.
That remains to be seen. It is way too early to tell. If and when the library gets accepted by Boost and becomes widely used, maybe with some commercial implementations, then the LWG could fall in love with the PBSP proposal. It is very similar to shared_ptr. Remember shared_ptr (then called counted_ptr) was rejected by the full committee (although approved by the LWG) back in 1994 or 1995.
We should be more honest about this stuff in the LWG so we don't push away people trying to help us.
Ideally every proposal should be pre-approved by the comittee and at least one guy from the LWG should cooporate with the team doing a specific library to ensure it turns out to be what the LWG is looking for.
That might be the "ideal" way to do it, but the committee doesn't work that way. Nothing happens until a proposal appears in a mailing. It is all arm waving until then. An expression of interest is the best anyone can hope for.
I don't mind doing work for free---as long as it is not waisted; waisted work would **** me off.
Understood, but that's the way the cookie sometimes crumbles. An unexpected proposal can always come out of the blue which causes your proposal to be rejected. --Beman