Annual Report for J16

Covering the Period from July 2006 to July 2007
Title of INCITS Subgroup: Programming Language C++
Links:
• J16 Web Site
• J16 on INCITS Web Site
Report sections:
• Executive summary
• Significant accomplishments
• Significant challenges
• Expected challenges
• Previous year's meetings
• Next year's meetings
• Liaison activities
• Membership and Officers
• Future Trends
• Other administrative information

Informal Description of Work:

Technical Committee J16 is responsible for the technical development of an international standard for the C++ programming language. The goal of the project is to make it possible for C++ programs to be highly portable among different operating systems and across a wide variety of computers.

1. Executive Summary

Technical Committee J16 is responsible for the technical development of an international standard for the C++ programming language. The goal of this Type L Project is to make it possible for C++ programs to be highly portable among different operating systems and across a wide variety of computers. High level of compatibility with the ISO C standard and suitability for the international community are two associated goals established by J16 that will help to extend the useful life of this standard and increase the audience of its users.

The level of participation continues to be high, with about 45 meeting attendees, including voting members, observer members, WG21 delegates, and occasional guests. Most of the work during meetings is done in informal, highly technically-oriented sessions of the whole committee and ad-hoc subgroups with specific assignments. A significant amount of work is carried on through electronic mail.

The Final Draft International Standard, completed in November 1997, was submitted to ISO and to ANSI for voting early in 1998. The ISO member nation vote completed on July 9, with unanimous approval of the FDIS as the International Standard. Formal publication took place on September 1, 1998. An update to the standard was published in 2003.

The primary work of the Committee during the last 12 months was processing Defect Reports, working on new Technical Reports on additions to the C++ language and library, and work on a future C++ standard targeted for year 2009.

2. Significant Accomplishments

• Technical Report TR 18015, C++ performance, published
• Technical Report DTR 19768, C++ Library Extensions, awaiting publication.
• NP 24737, C++ Library Extensions (#2), approved, will submit for registration.
• Technical Report DTR 24733, Decimal Floating Point, Registered.
• Considerable work has been done on defining new language features for the next C++ standard, and incorporated into the Working Paper.
• Many Defect Reports were resolved during this year, and incorporated into the Working Paper.

3. Significant Challenges

The scope of work taken on for the next C++ standard may be difficult to accomplish in the scheduled time.

4. Expected Challenges

The major challenge for the coming year will be reconciling conflicting demands on a future version of the C++ standard. Conflicts include a desire not to break source or binary compatibility with old programs while providing new features and in some cases changed language semantics.

5. Committee Activities

a. Previous Year's Meetings:

Note: The meeting numbers listed in the 2006 Annual Report were incorrect. The meeting numbers in the 2004-05 report were correct, however.

b. Next Year's Planned Meetings:

6. Liaison Activities

• SC22/WG21, Programming Language C++. J16 and WG21 co-locate meetings and work in concert to assure a single ANSI and ISO standard for the C++ language.
• J11 (SC22/WG14), Programming Language C. Formal liaison personnel, plus some common membership. Both committees desire to promote a large common subset of C and C++ to aid programmers. Large application programs commonly include a mix of C and C++ code.
• SC22/WG14 Rapporteur Group liaison for work on a Decimal Floating-Point TR.
• Austin Group (Single Unix Specification), primarily via common membership. The purpose is to watch for any Unix requirements that have C++ impact. (The Austin Group has a C++ binding effort under way.)
• MSIRA - Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (http://www.misra.org.uk/). They are developing C++ coding standards, for which we are providing assistance, via common membership.
• ECMA/TC39/TG5 (http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/TC39-TG5.htm), via common membership. Proposed C++/CLI submission was withdrawn.

7. Membership and Officers

Membership numbers continue to remain stable. Attendance is usually 40-55 people, of whom 22-28 are voting members.

a. Officers:

b. Membership:

Membership List

8. Future Trends and Related Technical Activities

In the C++ arena, the interest in application and possibly extension of C++ in several technical areas is stabilizing. These areas include concurrent and distributed programming, persistency, object management, and management of class libraries.

Over 40 companies and other organizations participate actively and over the long term in developing the C++ standard. More than 100 other organizations monitor progress as observers. All major implementers of C++ systems are or have been represented on the committee, as well as many large-scale users of C++ and C++ add-on products. The use of C++ continues to be the language of choice for development of large and also small projects. It is used as the implementation language for data bases, particularly OODBs, application servers, operating systems, and even for embedded computers in various consumer products.

The committee work in 2007-08 will focus on the following areas.

• Process Defect Reports received externally or generated internally. We maintain on the committee web site publicly-accessible lists of reports received to reduce duplication of reports. A Technical Corrigendum was published in 2003. More DRs remain to be resolved in the next revision to the standard.
• Work on the second Technical Report, additions to the C++ standard library.
• Work on the Technical Report, Decimal Arithmetic.
• Complete a Committee Draft of the next version of the C++ Language Standard.

9. Other Administrative Information

The work of J16 is an approved international project under JTC1/SC22/WG21. As such, the work has a high degree of international visibility, and requires the ongoing contribution of international members. J16 and WG21 co-locate their meetings to facilitate review of the progress of this work, and to vote on the adoption or continuation of certain aspects of this work. When votes are taken by WG21 on these matters, J16, acting as the US TAG, will first establish a US position on such a vote using standard US TAG voting procedures. However, in cases of controversy as well as in cases of critical votes, such as the CD registration ballot and approval of changes to the working documents, establishment of a US position is done in a separate US TAG meeting, or via letter ballot, per INCITS procedures.

J16 collects no dues, and has no financial activities.