Re: [boost] Boost.TR1: A first cut.

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-01-24 17:16:44

At 06:39 AM 1/24/2005, Jeff Garland wrote:
 >On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 10:55:03 -0000, John Maddock wrote
 >> >> My prediction is that it will be four to six years before all the
 >> >> compilers boost users care about ship with the full tr1 in the box.
 >> >
 >> > Wow, I sure hope you're wrong.  That's an awful long time considering 

 >that
 >> > they have open implementations to use as a starting point.
 >>
 >> Maybe, the impression I'm getting is that commercial TR1
 >> implementations will be available soon, but that they won't ship
 >> with compilers until they become part of the official standard.
 >                 ^^^^^
 >
 >Ok, I thought they were already 'official', but not required.    So when
 >does it become 'official'?

It has to be voted on by ISO member countries, at least once, if not twice. 
Those are full votes of all ISO members, not just those that participate on 
the C++ committee. While to some extent these votes are just formal stamps 
of approval, there is always a chance that some country will throw a wrench 
in the works. Even if nothing unexpected occurs, my guess is the process 
will take a couple of years. International standards, even if just a 
Technical Report, are important enough that no one wants to rush and make a 
mistake in the approval process.

While the availability of open source implementations, particularly the 
test suites, helps library suppliers to some extent, most of them will 
still implement from scratch. And some parts of the TR like the special 
functions don't have open source implementations available.

Then with some compiler vendors there seems to be a really lengthy delay 
between the time the library suppliers like Dinkumware make code available, 
and when that code actually ships with a production compiler.

Thus my "four to six years" guesstimate.

--Beman