CppCon 2017: Kate Gregory “10 Core Guidelines You Need to Start Using Now”

No, GSL is a kind of stop-gap solution, until standard catches on. For example std::string_view and ongoing design on std::array_view are based on gsl::span . The gsl::byte is also no longer needed on C++17 thanks to std::byte as yet another example. The GSL asserts are there until code contracts[0] get into the standard. The magical types like gsl::owner allow clang-tidy and VC++ checkers to apply a Rust-like memory tracking usage. Kate Gregory did a presentation at CppCon 2017. "10 Core Guidelines You Need to Start Using Now" [this video] As for not taking off, being initially a Microsoft proposal, it is surely used by Office and Windows teams, specially given they already use SDL (Security Definition Language) macros as well. [0] [link]

In fact, Sutter (et al) are working on lifetimes in CppCoreGuidelines [1]. I built their clang tree and tried it out without bothering to RTFM and tried out the warning on a pile of C++ code. I naively assumed that it might be a generally-useful warning ("-Wlifetime") that's not ready to be introduced upstream. That's not the case AFAICT. What I suppose I would've learned from RTFM is that the profile specified by the guidelines is sorta like an opt-in 'dialect' to annotate/specify lifetime information. Without it, there's lots of spurious findings. Either that, or the codebase I tried it on isn't as good as I thought it was. Here's a couple of interesting examples of failure modes -Wlifetime can detect on godbolt[2][3]. I watched a video [5] a while back on the Guidelines Support Library (GSL) [4] and it seemed like a really interesting concept. I think it's a valuable idea and I'd love to see popular C++ projects leveraging it. I'm a card-carrying RESF member† (but have a day job w/mostly C++). Don't RIIR for one thing, RIIR to get all the things. Cargo is the sleeper hit of Rust. Hygienic macros and more! [1] [link] [2] [link] [3] [link] [4] [link] [5] CppCon 2017: Kate Gregory “10 Core Guidelines You Need to Start Using Now” [this video] † Rust Evangelism Strike Force -- maybe we really should have cards