On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 6:18 AM, Niall Douglas
I'd need a fair bit of convincing that observer<T> has merit in any form except additional clarity to help demarcate unupgraded code from upgraded code. If that's your argument, and you're not doing funny things with implicit conversion from T& and other funny non-GSL semantics, I'd suppose this though I'd suggest you actually contribute it to GSL itself and persuade Neil to let it in.
The GSL is a *much* better home for it than Boost because then you'll have Bjarne batting for it, plus static checking support from Microsoft in VS2017 and Google via clang-tidy. You'll also get a *huge* userbase almost instantly, because the GSL or rather one of its C++ 98 clones is seeing exponential growth recently. It's amazingly useful for upgrading ancient C++ codebases.
I have just written up a proposal for inclusion of these types in the GSL, which you can find here: https://github.com/hpesoj/cpp-observer/blob/master/GSL-PROPOSAL.md While I don't want to appropriate the Boost mailing list for unrelated purposes, I thought I would post this here since I am still not entirely sure where I should be proposing this. My proposal would pretty much look the same whoever I pitched it to. And perhaps those involved in this thread are interested anyway. I'd be glad to hear any opinions. p.s. I am no longer doing funny things with implicit conversion from `T&`.