[cfe-dev] [libcxx] Handling multi-platform configuration.

["C. Bergström"]

Dimitry Andric wrote:
> On 2010-12-11 04:20, "C. Bergström" wrote:
>> This is *exactly* why it would be greatly appreciated if people would
>> help improve stdcxx [1] instead of trying to just write everything from
>> scratch.  Regardless whatever superficial evaluation has been done I'd
>> kindly ask any volunteers to reevaluate this.
>>
>> Martin, on cc, who worked on this codebase for 10 years and is on the
>> C++ standards committee can chime in if he likes.
>
> Unfortunately, the stdcxx library is under the Apache License 2.0, which
> is not acceptable for many people, projects and companies.
The Apache license is very permissive and can you give an example of a 
company/person/project it's not acceptable for?  Is there any 
company/person contributing to libcxx now that can't use it?  (It's 
certainly not GPL, allows binary only distribution and can't please 
everyone all of the time..)
> (Note I am
> *not* saying anything about the quality of it, which may very well be
> excellent; I haven't looked at that.)
>
> Also, the "Why a new C++ Standard Library for C++'0x?" FAQ on the libc++
> site says:
>
> "STLport and the Apache libstdcxx library are two other popular
> candidates, but both lack C++'0x support. Our experience (and the
> experience of libstdc++ developers) is that adding support for C++0x (in
> particular rvalue references and move-only types) requires changes to
> almost every class and function, essentially amounting to a rewrite.
> Faced with a rewrite, we decided to start from scratch and evaluate
> every design decision from first principles based on experience."
Yeah I've seen that FAQ and that's why I asked people to reevaluate 
this.  Whoever looked into this really didn't take into account some 
things on both sides.

a) STDCXX - The amount of work to extend for a single platform/arch is 
much less than has been suggested
b) The amount of work to get to the level of production quality across 
multiple platforms has been greatly underestimated
c) Others who are already using STDCXX are much more likely to help with 
that than move to a new STL (HP/PathScale/Sun/Roguewave. etc)