[boost] Report from Berlin C++ Standards Committee meeting

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-04-09 15:48:53

The C++ Standards Committee met last week in Berlin, Germany. Of interest to 
Boosters:

* All of TR1 except special functions has been voted into C++0x, the next 
standard. Special functions were supported by the Library Working Group 
(LWG), including vendors such as Dinkumware, but they didn't fly in full 
committee. Compiler vendors indicate great worry about support costs. This 
vote isn't necessarily the end of the story since support for special 
functions was strong, although not quite enough to achieve the consensus 
needed. (The committee will only go ahead if there is consensus - a simple 
majority isn't good enough.)

* Boost Filesystem was voted into TR2.

* Boost Lexical Cast has been tentatively accepted by the LWG for TR2.

* Boost Any has been tentatively accepted by the LWG for TR2.

* A Boost Date-Time query was presented at the last meeting, and LWG members 
again in Berlin indicated interest in seeing a full proposal for TR2.

* A Boost Networking [asio] query was presented, and the LWG has indicated 
their interest in a full proposal for TR2. The developer of a competing 
proposal has graciously thrown his support behind the Boost proposal, and 
may propose some additional higher level functionality.

* Boost Threads has been reaffirmed as the LWG's choice as the basis for a 
TR2 threading library. Pete Becker's 
www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n1907.html is the most 
recent version of the proposal. It will be refined and modified as work 
progresses. Howard Hinnant plans to propose unifying the lock classes into 
scoped_lock/shared_lock and possibly one other class. Pete will propose a 
function to access the underlying operating system handles to allow access 
to non-portable functionality. I've committed to review error handling to 
ensure handling of operating system errors is consistent between all TR2 
libraries.

* It looks more and more likely that Concepts will go into C++0x. If 
Concepts do go into the core language, the LWG has indicated their intent to 
percolate Concepts throughout the Standard Library. (Concepts were being 
held up by two competing proposals, but those two proposals are in process 
of being coalesced into a single proposal by Bjarne Stroustrup and Doug 
Gregor.)

The next committee meetings are:

     October, 2006, Portland, Oregon.  See 
www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2006/n1946.htm
     Spring, 2007, Oxford, England.
     Fall, 2007, Kona, Hawaii

This coming October is the deadline for TR2 proposals. See 
www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n1810.html

--Beman