C++26 stumbles at finish line over Contracts dispute
Contracts dispute Contracts allow developers to add preconditions and postconditions to code, as well as assertions that check whether specified conditions hold.
Key points
- “The P2900 contracts and extensions aim to change the nature of C++ and are an existential threat to C++, adding complexity and bloat,” Stroustrup and his colleagues wrote in a paper last August.
- Developers have proposed adding Contracts to C++ for at least a decade, after when they were abruptly yanked from C++20 owing to concerns over dangerous defaults.
- But others are eager to see Contracts implemented, even arguing the tech's detractors are poisoning the C++ development process itself.
The next version of the C++ programming language may be delayed at the last minute due to a dispute over a security-enhancing Contracts feature.
Additional details
- The undo button has to be smashed on a lot of library hardening already done using Contracts.
- They can carve Contracts out of the spec so the rest of C++26 can ship.
- Contracts was the major sticking point for those voting nay.
- In October, the Draft International Standard (DIS) of C++26 failed its ISO ballot — the next-to-last stage in the International Organization for Standardization’s approval process during which a standard's technical details are formally ratified by a set of national standards bodies.
- Andreas Fertig, a member of the C++ standardization committee, feels that the criticisms have already been vetted and that vetoing the proposal this late in the C++ release process is damaging to C++ itself.
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