Beman Dawes :
The C++ committee met last week. There was lot's of discussion and plans to markedly increase the size of the standard library. Boost has an important part to play; Bjarne Stroustrup hoped for "doubling the output of Boost."
Sounds like Pharoah, but I'm sure he meant to be encouraging.
Here are some of the process changes:
* Library proposals will be taken on as "work Items". A decision as to whether a work item ends up in a technical report, in the standard itself, or even becomes a stand-alone international standard, will be deferred until technical work is complete (I.E. full standardese complete, polished, and ready to ship).
* Domain specific "Study Groups" will replace the LWG's current sub-groups. Study groups have official ISO standing, so can get more work done between meetings than the old sub-groups, which were unofficial.
* Technical reports will likely be smaller than in the past, and may be domain specific.
How will they be named? I'm fine with multiple TRs, but calling the next one TR2 seems reasonable to me.
These changes are intended to allow work on different libraries to proceed in parallel. Medium to large libraries managed by study groups will most likely end up as a TRs and will ship when ready rather than being held waiting for a larger TR to become ready.
The study groups set up so far:
* SG1: Concurrency and Parallelism (chair: Hans Boehm). This is the old Concurrency sub-group.
* SG2: Modules (chair: Doug Gregor). A new sub-group of the committee's evolution working group (EWG).
I'm hoping there will be support for partial classes here. I don't think Vandevoorde's proposal takes this into account. Is there another modules proposal?
* SG3: File System (chair: Beman Dawes). A LWG sub-group to handle the Boost.Filesystem work item approved at the meeting.
* SG4: Networking (chair: Kyle Kloepper). A LWG sub-group to handle the Boost.Asio work item approved at the meeting.
It looks like cryptography is slipping through the cracks. If there are signs of life in the crypto lib you're using please let me know.
There should be a "Call for Library Proposals" in the committee's post-meeting mailing in roughly 10 days.
While C++ needs more libraries, I'd like to see it get rid of/improve some existing libraries. Herb mentioned valarray being little used. I think that's right. -- Brian Wood Ebenezer Enterprises http://webEbenezer.net "Prepare your work without, and make it fit for yourself in the field; and afterward build your house." Proverbs 24:27