Two years of Meeting C++! -- Jens Weller

By Blog Staff | Jul 8, 2014 10:57 PM | Tags: None

A lot has changed in just two years. Check this out for some visibility into the European C++ scene.

Two years of Meeting C++!

by Jens Weller

Note: Jens will be giving two talks at two talks at CppCon, including "Founding User Groups." He knows what he's talking about... from the article:

While I only know of 3 active User Groups around 2011/early 2012 (Oslo, Belgium & Düsseldorf), the active user Groups in Europe are a huge success, showing the popularity of C++: ... Also note, that I haven't listed active ACCU Groups, there exist a few in Great Britain, but I'm not sure when they started and how active they are. In total there currently 17 User Groups being active in 2014 or 2013.

C++11 Final Override -- 741MHz

By Blog Staff | Jul 8, 2014 10:39 PM | Tags: intermediate basics

A good article posted last year and making the rounds again this week:

C++11 Final Override

by 741MHz

From the article:

C++11 introduces two important keywords in relation to polymorphism and inheritance — the override and final. Using those keywords should become a habit of any C++ developer. It is worth using every time except when writing a base class. This will make the code clear, maintainable, and potentially save hours that would have been otherwise wasted chasing an error in debugger.

Introducing the CppCon House Band: Jim Basnight

By Blog Staff | Jul 8, 2014 12:30 PM | Tags: None

As already announced, CppCon is recording all sessions and panels, including on-mic Q&A. However, note that only the sessions will be recorded, not all of CppCon -- things that you can experience only by attending including lightning talks, BoFs, hackathons, extended Q&A with the 70+ speakers (when you follow them around after their mics turn off or enjoy extended ad-hoc hallway chats), live house band performances, other extra technical and social events in breaks and evening, and...

... wait. Did we say "live house band performances"?

We did indeed.

As part of presenting CppCon, the Foundation is proud to sponsor live music by a great local Seattle area act, The Jim Basnight Band. Jim and the boys  will be playing CppCon all five days and serving up all kinds of original music and covers, from rock and pop to funk and soul and a few surprises. Be sure to get to each day's plenary session early to rock out, and enjoy their Pacific Northwest musical vibe at other times throughout the week. The band has a deep song catalog, so get your requests ready.

We hope you'll join us in September to enjoy not only the deep technical breadth and depth of 2014's premier C++ conference program, but also the round-the-clock "unconference" and musical parts of the fun and refreshing spirit of CppCon.

Hundreds of attendees have already registered for C++'s "Woodstock 2014." Early Bird registration ends tomorrow.

(If you're reading this via a newsreader and don't get the embedded audio, visit this post on isocpp.org and enjoy.)

CppCon 2014 Video Recording -- Boris Kolpackov

By Blog Staff | Jul 8, 2014 06:47 AM | Tags: None

A very welcome announcement, hot off the press at cppcon.org:

CppCon 2014 Video Recording

by Boris Kolpackov

Every time we post an update on CppCon 2014 someone asks if there will be a recording of the conference. From the beginning we ruled out going the C++Now way by having student volunteers record sessions using consumer camcoders. It is a huge headache for those organizing it just for C++Now’s 3 tracks. It simply won’t scale to CppCon’s 6. So the decision was made to either record professionally or not to record at all. And professional recording of a week-long conference with 6 tracks is not cheap. This is why we couldn’t give a concrete answer until we knew for sure. And now we know for sure: we found a sponsor (can’t yet announce who it is), the contract has been signed, and the entire 6 tracks will be professionally recorded!

Now if you think there is no longer a good reason to attend CppCon in person, let me give you several. There will be recording but no live streaming (live streaming is on a whole new level, expense-wise). Because of the number of sessions involved, we will only be able to publish them about a month later. There will also be no recording of the “unconference” material: lightning talks, hackathons, BoF sessions, extended Q&A, etc.

But the main difference between being there and watching things a month later is missing out on what happens after the talks. Organizers of C++Now like to joke that half of the conference happens between the presentations, in personal interactions.

From personal experience, I spent 1.5 hours after my C++Now presentation chatting to a bunch of attendees who were particularly interested in the topic of my talk. I am not kidding: it was the same length as my presentation! You can’t participate in stuff like this if you are not there.

The bottom line: yes, you will eventually be able to view all the sessions but you will miss out on a lot of fun, personal interactions, and insight that comes with that.

Video recording is also great news for those planning to come. Remember, you can only attend one talk out of every six. But now you will be able to catch up with the video recordings.

If you have never attended a C++ conference and you are not sure whether CppCon is worth it, I hope I managed to convey some of the atmosphere that you can expect. If C++Now is anything to go by, this will be a week where you will learn more about C++ than in the rest of the year all while having a lot of fun.

And remember, the Early Bird registration deadline is tomorrow.

CppCon Program Highlights, 1 of N

By Blog Staff | Jul 8, 2014 06:43 AM | Tags: None

The CppCon 2014 conference program has been posted for the upcoming September conference. We previously posted part of the CppCon program in six program preview blog posts, each containing a few session titles and abstracts. Several people have expressed that they prefer being able to absorb the program in this way as "bite-sized" blog posts, so we're going to continue posting a few additional sessions at a time this way, sometimes with commentary, until the entire conference program has been posted also via this blog series.

Note: Early Bird registration ends tomorrow.

Multi-device development across iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and other platforms is increasingly in demand, and C++ is the only modern language supported on all of those platforms. We find many developers are still unaware of how C++ is being quietly adopted across major companies as the language of choice for sharing code to develop their cross-platform apps -- even in apps originally written in other platform-specific languages. In these talks, the CppCon program covers development in this exciting modern area, and we think you'll see that the speakers are Those Who Know and Those Who Do in some of the leading efforts in our industry.

In this post:

• Practical Cross-Platform Mobile C++ Development at Dropbox
• From the Dropbox Trenches: A Deep Dive into Two Cross-Platform Mobile Apps Written in C++
• UI Prototyping and Development for Multiple Devices in C++
• Multiplatform C++

​

Practical Cross-Platform Mobile C++ Development at Dropbox

The conventional wisdom of multi-platform mobile development comes down to two choices: write all your complex logic at least twice or settle for a slow, non-native experience for your users. Come learn how Dropbox has embraced a third option, where fast, cross-platform code in C++ is married to a smooth, native UI for the best of both worlds.

In Dropbox’s new generation of iOS and Android apps, we leverage the strengths of the platform frameworks while only writing and maintaining one version of complex logic like data syncing. We’ll explain the benefits and pitfalls of interfacing C++ to platform-specific code via Objective-C++ and JNI and how code generation has freed us from much of the effort involved. We’ll share the benefits we’ve gained from C++11/14, as well as the drawbacks, and how we’ve overcome each platform’s quirks. Finally, we’ll share tools that let you try this out yourselves.

Speakers:

• Alex Allain, Platforms and Libraries Lead, Dropbox. Alex has been writing about C++ since 1998, when he started Cprogramming.com. In 2012, he published Jumping into C++ to teach new programmers how to think like a professional C++ programmer. At Dropbox, Alex leads the Platforms and Libraries team, helping make the dream of cross-platform C++11 a reality. Prior to Dropbox, Alex led a team at Liquid Machines focused on injecting code into applications to perform binary hooking.
• Andrew Twyman, Software Engineer, Dropbox. Andrew Twyman has been developing products and libraries in C++ for almost 10 years. He loves building robust systems and solving tricky low-level problems. Starting in 2012, Andrew helped spearhead Dropbox’s new approach to cross-platform mobile development. Now on the Platforms and Libraries team, Andrew is helping bring cross-platform goodness to Dropbox’s new generation of mobile and desktop apps. Prior to Dropbox, Andrew was an architect at Liquid Machines, where shared libraries supported parallel development of more products than there were developers.

From the Dropbox Trenches: A Deep Dive into Two Cross-Platform Mobile Apps Written in C++

At Dropbox we’ve spent the last year and a half building two cross platform mobile apps: the email client, Mailbox, and the photo gallery, Carousel. We started with the goal of a native look and feel with seamless performance but also needed to leverage a small team to build these apps on multiple platforms. We ultimately accomplished this by using C++ to share significant amounts of code in each app.

We’ll cover what portions of our apps we built in C++ and why we left some portions in the platform languages of Java and Objective-C, deep diving into some of the most important components. We’ll also discuss some unexpected benefits, areas we faced technical and human challenges, and some tips and tricks that you can use to leverage C++ to build very high performance apps.

Speakers:

• Tony Grue, Engineering Manager, Dropbox. Tony has been building mobile applications, mostly in C++, for the last 8 years.  He worked on Dropbox for Android as it grew from a few million to more than 100 million installs. Now he leads the Carousel for Android and lib-carousel teams at Dropbox. Before Dropbox, Tony was at Microsoft where he contributed to the email, SMS, and visual search clients on Windows Phone.
• Steven Kabbes, Mobile Engineer, Dropbox. Steven was a member of the founding team of Mailbox and designed many of the core email sync algorithms that power it. Since then he has been working on cross platform mobile building the C++ layer of Mailbox which powers clients on iOS, Android and Mac. Steven is especially passionate about developer libraries, specifically ones that enable fast iteration on the next generation of products. https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/u/592178

UI Prototyping and Development for Multiple Devices in C++

Using C++ for multi-device user interface and app development should be pretty straightforward. However, since the Standard C++ Language and Library specification does not specify a user interface library, it’s actually quite challenging given that the two leading mobile platforms provide non-C++ User Interface APIs. Even more challenging is the new world of mobile devices and the myriad form factors, layouts, resolutions, sensors, and services that an application developer has to deal with. Plus, the deployment model for remote devices makes testing UI changes slower due to the increased build and turnaround time. This session will describe how C++ can be used effectively for multi-device UI development and also deliver a rapid prototyping experience to minimize the deployment time to the device for testing.

Speaker: John "JT" Thomas, Director of Product Management at Embarcadero Technologies. JT has more than 15 years of product management and product development experience including hands-on experience with the early versions of Delphi and C++Builder at Borland Software. Previously, JT held product management positions at mobile Linux vendor MontaVista Software and at Research in Motion. He earned his Computer Science degree from University of California, Santa Cruz and his MBA and MSE from San Jose State University.Website: http://www.embarcadero.comTwitter handle: @FireMonkeyPM

Multiplatform C++

C++ is a multiplatform language, yet many difficulties arise when you want the same code to compile properly and function identically on different platforms. If you put aside the obvious system programming related obstacles, and the differences you might have between compilers (especially when it comes to supporting C++11 and C++14), you come to the surprising conclusion that what is truly hard is all the "little things" you didn't anticipate.

This talk will be about our experience with our own software, quasardb, that runs every day on three OS (FreeBSD, Linux and Windows), is built with three compilers (clang, gcc and msvc) and supports two architectures (IA32 and AMD64).

How to build natively the same software on Windows and Linux, provided that they have radically different tool chains? How to work around the subtle, but existing differences between Linux and FreeBSD? How do you solve cross-tools, cross-platform file editing problems? How to prevent your maintenance costs from increasing dramatically?

Speaker: Edouard Alligand, Chairman & CTO, Bureau 14. Edouard has more than thirteen years of professional experience in software engineering. After years hacking the kernel of various operating systems, Edouard founded Bureau 14, the home of the hyperscalable database quasardb. Combining an excellent knowledge of low level programming with a perverse love for template meta-programming, Edouard likes to come up with uncompromising solutions to seemingly impossible problems. He lives in Paris, France. Website: https://blogea.bureau14.fr/ http://twitter.com/edouarda14

Trip Report: Summer ISO C++ meeting

By Herb Sutter | Jul 3, 2014 07:43 PM | Tags: None

The summer 2014 WG21 (ISO C++) meeting was held in Rapperswil, Switzerland on June 16-21. Many thanks to HSR Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil for hosting us!

The meeting proceeded pretty much as usual, but because the final (we hope) approval ballot for C++14 itself is still in progress until August 15, in accordance with ISO rules we didn’t formally approve any edits to the C++ working paper. At the next meeting we expect to approve the work of this meeting and next meeting in one batch to kick off the road to C++17.

We also made good progress on most of the eight (8) Technical Specifications in flight; see the current ISO C++ status page for the list. Here are some highlights.

First, we sent three documents out for ballot. This is the first time in ISO C++ history that we have sent three documents out for ballot out of a single meeting.

• File System TS progresses to its final ballot (DTS): We finished addressing the international review comments on the File System comment ballot (aka PDTS), so we now have what should be the final text of the TS. In the next week or two I’ll send that out for its final ballot, and barring surprises we expect the TS to be published this year. Thanks very much to project editor Beman Dawes and the many participants and international reviewers who made this a high quality document!
• Parallelism TS progresses to its main comment ballot (PDTS): This is the "Parallel STL" TS that adds parallel and vector lane execution to STL algorithms.
• Library Fundamentals TS progresses to its main comment ballot (PDTS): We approved adding several features to the Library Fundamentals TS, notably the generalized negator not_fun and fixes for optional<T>. With this, the feature set of “version 1” of the TS is now complete and so it’s going out for its main international review ballot. (But wait, there’s more; see below.)

But we did other things too:

• Library Fundamentals TS “version 2” kicked off: We also approved adding the first items for “version 2” of the Library Fundamentals TS. If you’re wondering how we can do that while version 1 is still in progress, the way to think of this is that we’ve now “finished loading the train” for the feature set of Library Fundamentals TS version 1, and we now will get a round of international comments to fine-tune those features and tighten down the load so the train can start moving out of the station. But while that’s happening, over on the next track we’ve also pulled up another set of empty cars and “started loading the next train” by also approving the creation of the first working paper for the next Library Fundamentals TS, “version 2,” and voting the first items into that. If this were software, we’d call it pipelining – same pattern.
• Networking TS ‘rebooted’: This TS took a big step forward. In recent meetings, the focus of the work had been very small – basically just network byte order conversion, IP addresses, and URIs. At this meeting, the Library Evolution group decided that they would like to make a big bet here and not just take small things piecemeal, but adopt a large and complete proposal based on Boost.ASIO as a starting point. We expect to see an updated version of the ASIO proposal at the next meeting, and hopefully be able to adopt it as our working paper there.
• Concurrency TS: The executors proposal has been improving with work between meetings, but still does not quite have consensus. So at this meeting we have removed executors from the Concurrency TS so that this doesn’t stand in the way of progressing the core parts that do have consensus. It’s possible that executors may be reintroduced before version 1 of the TS, but we’ll see. It’s possible that this TS may be ready for its main international comment ballot (PDTS) after the next meeting, but again we’ll have to see.
• Concepts TS: This got a very thorough wording review by the Core language working group, and we expect it to be in great shape for sending out for PDTS (comment) ballot after our next meeting this fall.

There’s more, but those are some highlights.

In my previous trip report, I wrote:

WG21 has now shipped out documents for ballot in the last three consecutive ISO C++ meetings, and the plan is for this to continue. We have been filling up our pipeline, and now we’re seeing work come out the other end at a brisk pace.

After the long and “working relatively invisibly” period of C++0x, it’s very interesting to see ISO C++ now in a mode where “shipping something out for ISO ballot” is becoming the normal outcome of every meeting. Thanks again to all the volunteers who make it possible! And stay tuned for more to come throughout this year…

This time, again, we sent out not one but three documents for ballot. Quite a meeting.

Thanks, again, to everyone who worked so hard to make this happen.

CppCon 2014 Program Available -- Boris Kolpackov

By Blog Staff | Jul 2, 2014 06:00 AM | Tags: None

This is the day we've been waiting for: The CppCon 2014 Program is now available, with over 100 one-hour sessions by over 70 speakers.

Early Bird extended to July 9: Because there were many more good talk submissions than could fit into even a full-week six-track conference, the Program Committee needed an extra week to finalize the program selection. Early Bird registration was scheduled to end a week after the program was available to make sure that everyone could see the program in time for Early Bird, so the Early Bird registration has therefore also been extended to match, and will close on July 9. Register today for "the" C++ event of 2014.

Here's the announcement on cppcon.org:

CppCon 2014 Program Available

by Boris Kolpackov

The CppCon 2014 Program is now available with talk titles, abstracts, and speakers. The program contains over 100 one-hour sessions by over 70 speakers including plenary sessions by Scott Meyers and Herb Sutter, as well as the keynotes by C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup on Keeping Simple Things Simple and Mark Maimone on using C++ on Mars: Incorporating C++ into Mars Rover Flight Software.

The detailed schedule including the exact day and time of each talk will be posted in the coming weeks. We have also extended the Early Bird deadline to July 9 so you have a week to study the program and still get the Early Bird rate.

Finally, we would like to thank the program committee, the speakers on the program, and the many more who proposed talks which we unfortunately just couldn’t squeeze in this year. Thank you for your hard work and enthusiastic support for this year’s program!

POCO Development Release 1.5.3 Available -- Guenter Obiltschnig

By Blog Staff | Jul 1, 2014 02:34 PM | Tags: None

A minor update of POCO is available with some new functionality. Release 1.5.3 is planned to be the last in the series of 1.5.x development releases. Next is 1.6.0. and 2.0, with introduction of C++11/14 features.

POCO Development Release 1.5.3 Available

by Guenter Obiltschnig

We're told by the POCO labs that the list of major 1.5.3 additions is as follows:

New Libraries:

• SevenZip

New Classes:

• Poco::Clock
• Poco::Net::NTPClient

New major features:

• Windows PowerShell build script

New Platforms supported:

• SmartOS
• Windows Embedded Compact 2013

JetBrains ReSharper for C++ -- Daria Dovzhikova

By Blog Staff | Jul 1, 2014 02:16 PM | Tags: None

For those interested in checking out some new C++ refactoring tools support, if you're working in Visual Studio, news from JetBrains:

ReSharper for C++ EAP Goes On

by Daria Dovzhikova

From the article:

As you might have already heard the Early Access Program for ReSharper with C++ support is in progress.

We prepared a new build and wanted to share a quick update on what new features and options it brings to the table: ...

Quick Q: When are copy and move operations automatically generated? -- StackOverflow

By Blog Staff | Jun 30, 2014 11:53 AM | Tags: None

Recently on SO:

What are the rules for automatic generation of move operations?

In C++98, the C++ compiler could automatically generate copy constructor and copy assignment operator via member-wise copy, e.g.

struct X {
    std::string s;
    std::vector<int> v;
    int n;
};

The compiler automatically generates copy constructor and copy assignment operator for X, using member-wise copy.

But how do things change in C++11 with move semantics?

Are the move constructor and move assignment operator automatically generated, like copy constructors and copy assignment operators?

Are there cases in which move operations are not automatically generated?