Re: [Boost-users] C++ announcements coming tomorrow

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] C++ announcements coming tomorrow
From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-11-03 10:52:11

On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Beman Dawes <bdawes_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Herb Sutter, the Convenor of the ISO C++ Standards Committee, will be
> making some announcements tomorrow likely to be of interest to C++
> developers in general and Boosters in particular. The venue is a talk
> titled "The Future of C++" at the Microsoft Build Conference.
>
> While some of Herb's announcements will be specific to Microsoft, the
> key C++ initiatives involve Boost and the whole C++ community. Some of
> the ideas evolved from feedback Herb got at C++Now/BoostCon 2012 last
> May.
>
> I'll post a summary of the announcements tomorrow, but you can also
> watch the live stream at http://channel9.msdn.com at 12:45 PM Pacific
> time.

Here is the summary, in reverse order from Herb's presentation:

*  The isocpp.org web site has begun operations. This site is intended
to act as "The home of Standard C++ on the web — news, status and
discussion about the C++ standard on all compilers and platforms."

* The Standard C++ Foundation has been formed. See
http://isocpp.org/about for more information. Note the wide industry
support (backed by donations of money) and the Boost representation on
the Board of Directors. The first project funded by the Foundation is
the isocpp.org web site.

* The timeline for the C++ standards committee over the next 24 months
is aiming for three Technical Specifications (including a Filesystem
TS, based on Boost.Filesystem V3), and a minor revision of the C++
standard (tentatively C++14), with technical corrections and some
minor new language and library features. Following that, there will be
a constant stream of Technical Specifications and then a major
revision of the standard (tentatively C++17)). In other words, much
more frequent releases than in the past.

* Microsoft has released an out-of-band community technical preview
(CTP) for their compiler, adding explicit conversion operators, raw
string literals, function template default arguments, delegating
constructors, uniform initialization, and variatic templates. (See
http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/C9-Lectures-Stephan-T-Lavavej-Core-C-/STLCCSeries6
for instructions on how to use the CTP). Microsoft is promising more
such feature releases during the first half of 2013. This is important
for the whole C++ community, since it means that full C++11 support is
becoming a reality across all widely used compilers.

Herb's presentation has a lot of interesting perspectives. You can
watch it at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/2-005

--Beman