Libraries: A First Step Toward Standard C++ Dependency Management – Bret Brown & Bill Hoffman

https://cppcon.org/
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Delivering Safe C++ - Bjarne Stroustrup - CppCon 2023
https://github.com/CppCon/CppCon2023https://cppcon.org/ --- Libraries: A First Step Toward Standard C++ Dependency Management - Bret Brown & Bill Hoffman https://github.com/CppCon/CppCon2023 Prebuilt libraries have existed for decades… they even predate C++! After all these years, techniques to use prebuilt libraries are still ad hoc and difficult to maintain. A root cause of this variety of techniques is the variety of things that are C++ libraries: header-only libraries, statically-linked archives, dynamically-linked binaries, and so on. The consuming projects need to build against these libraries in consistent ways or risk unproductive workflows – and potentially, even catastrophic failure in production environments. This lack of convergence creates enormous interoperability problems across broad portions of the worldwide programming ecosystem, not just the C++ parts of it. This talk will explore the complexities of defining what is a “C++ library.” It will then present the joint work of Kitware, Bloomberg, and others toward a preliminary design for creating initial standards for dependency management in C++ – metadata files to describe prebuilt libraries. A roadmap for maturing the design will also be shared, including proposing a standard definition for C++ libraries, building on previous proposals such as P1313: Package Specification (https://wg21.link/P1313). This talk is intended for anyone who produces, maintains, or consumes C++ libraries. Special knowledge of C++ tooling, build systems, or package managers is not required. --- Bill Hoffman Mr. Hoffman is a founder of Kitware and currently serves as Chairman of the Board, Vice President, and Chief Technical Officer (CTO). He is the original author and lead architect of CMake, an open source, cross-platform build and configuration tool that is used by hundreds of projects around the world, and he is the co-author of the accompanying text, Mastering CMake. Using his 20+ years of experience with large software systems development, Mr. Hoffman is also a major technical contributor to Kitware’s Visualization Toolkit, Insight Toolkit, and ParaView projects. Bret Brown Bret Brown is the lead of the C++ Infrastructure team for Bloomberg's Developer Experience department where he focuses on build systems, packaging standards, compilation toolchain support, and other ecosystem aspects for C++. As part of that role, he is also active in the ISO C++ Tooling Study Group (SG-15). Bret likes making authoring and maintaining C++ codebases simpler and more intuitive by treating projects more like cattle and less like pets. He is especially interested in the software development lifecycle, development automation, modern build systems, packaging, code transformation, software governance, and code analysis. Bret worked in embedded C++ and safety critical C++ for previous employers. __ Videos Filmed & Edited by Bash Films: http://www.BashFilms.com YouTube Channel Managed by Digital Medium Ltd https://events.digital-medium.co.uk #cppcon #programming #cpp