Fwd: CFV: "C++ programming in GNU" interest group (possibly including coding standard development)

Fwd: CFV: "C++ programming in GNU" interest group (possibly including coding standard development)

[James Youngman]

Dear GCC developers,

I'm looking into creating a C++ coding standard for GNU programs.
See below for the CFV (which you therefore might have already read by
being on the other list; if so, sorry for the duplication).

I'd be particularly interested in the question of whether the coding
standards for GCC (i.e.
https://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/codingconventions.html) would be
usefully adopted by GNU projects (written in C++) generally.  If we
can re-use the existing standard for GCC, that might reduce the
overall size of the effort and reduce the likelihood of making choices
with unanticipated consequences.

Supposing you support the idea, I think you would likely be able to
provide valuable context on what has worked (or, perhaps, not) in the
GCC coding standard and to what extent you think this might be useful
elsewhere in GNU.   If you can volunteer to help this effort, please
let us know (by replying on this thread).

Thanks,
James.


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>
Date: Thu, May 30, 2019 at 4:04 PM
Subject: CFV: "C++ programming in GNU" interest group (possibly
including coding standard development)
To: Antonio Diaz Diaz <antonio@gnu.org>, Bruno Haible
<bruno@clisp.org>, Niels Möller <nisse@lysator.liu.se>


This email is BCC'ed to <gnu-prog-discuss@gnu.org> so that the members
of that list know what's happening.

If you are on the To: line, my understanding is that you have
volunteered to participate in discussions regarding the use of C++ in
GNU projects.

If you are not on the To: line, my understanding is that you have not
volunteered to participate.  I understand that despite this you might
be interested in hearing about how things are going.   I propose to
provide updates to <gnu-prog-discuss@gnu.org> but I'm not asking
people who simply want to get updates to do anything at this point.

Hence, if you don't want to work on this, you can stop reading now.


For those still reading, first, thanks for volunteering to help.  I
would like to start by asking you to suggest other GNU developers who
might also be interested in this area.   I'd like to ensure that we
consult widely across GNU so that we can get input (and ideally, help)
from any GNU developers wishing to be involved.   Getting input from a
wide group will also help to ensure that we don't end up adopting a
narrow view and
perhaps proposing a coding standard that's simply not broadly useful
to GNU projects in general.

If you want to invite someone who you believe might be interested, CC
them on this thread (feel free to ask them about it first if you're
not sure) or invite them to join the mailing list once it has been
created.   If you are not after all interested in participating
yourself, please say so on this thread so that the other volunteers
know to stop CCing you.

I propose to discuss our next steps on a separate mailing list and
invite additional volunteers to join it, so that we don't generate too
much traffic on <gnu-prog-discuss@gnu.org>.  The mailing list will
need a name.   Please send suggestions to me directly.  After a short
time I will mail you all with the list of suggestions and we can find
a consensus.

In our discussions, we might also touch on some related matters (e.g.
whether there might be resources other than a coding standard that
might be generally useful to C++ projects in GNU, or tools already in
GNU that would be of particular use in C++ development).

Any suggestions would be welcome, simply go ahead.


TL;DR:
1. Thanks for volunteering to help.  Let us know if you don't actually want to.
2. Please invite others to participate.  CC them, or invite them to
join the list.

Thanks,
James Youngman.

Re: CFV: "C++ programming in GNU" interest group (possibly including coding standard development)

[Mike Stump]

On May 30, 2019, at 10:55 AM, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org> wrote:
> I'm looking into creating a C++ coding standard for GNU programs.

So, parts of how we do C++ isn't really relevant to a larger community.  We at times cater to a C legacy and in a pure C++ project, there may be no need to do this.

ChangeLogs are debatable, and a project might want to option out of them.  We've talk about this from time to time, but haven't decided to do that.

We sometimes talk about significantly older language standards.  I'd like to think most project would update which language standard they use just a wee bit faster than we do.

But, all in all, sounds like a reasonable thing to do.  One skilled it the art of C++ and coding standards should be able to tease out the things that makes less sense I'd like to think.

Re: CFV: "C++ programming in GNU" interest group (possibly including coding standard development)

[Joseph Myers]

On Thu, 30 May 2019, Mike Stump wrote:

> On May 30, 2019, at 10:55 AM, James Youngman <jay@gnu.org> wrote:
> > I'm looking into creating a C++ coding standard for GNU programs.
> 
> So, parts of how we do C++ isn't really relevant to a larger community.  
> We at times cater to a C legacy and in a pure C++ project, there may be 
> no need to do this.

And on the other side of things, libstdc++ surely does plenty of things 
that would not be appropriate for most C++ projects that are not the 
standard library implementation - so it should be clear that many coding 
standards are not expected to apply in that context.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com