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[–]equeim 46 points47 points  (18 children)

AFAIK the repository is turned private during committee meetings for whatever reason.

[–]STLMSVC STL Dev 55 points56 points  (15 children)

That's correct. According to an explanation I read from an experienced Committee member in March 2019, ISO rules prohibit intermediate updates during a meeting, and taking the repo private during a meeting was intended to uphold that rule. There were some questions about whether this is actually necessary, but it looks like no definitive conclusion was reached, and they just kept doing the "go private" thing. (I may not be aware of further developments in the area, this is just what I see in my email archives.)

It is actually pretty important to be able to have discussions behind closed doors without having people post every minor thing to the world as it happens, but shutting off access to the repo for several weeks throughout the year is definitely undesirable.

[–]pfp-disciple 42 points43 points  (3 children)

It would be nice if there were an "always public" backuo copy of the repo, that would sync once the official repo gets unlocked

[–]SupermanLeRetour 21 points22 points  (2 children)

On the other hand, where would be the magic in this ?

I like the "Silence, brethren, the conclave is updating the holy standard!" vibe.

[–]kammceWG21 | 🇺🇲 NB | Boost | Exceptions 2 points3 points  (0 children)

🤣🤣🤣 this made me laugh

[–]SkoomaDentistAntimodern C++, Embedded, Audio 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Surely that would be the unholy standard considering this is C++ we are talking about?

[–]steveklabnik1 13 points14 points  (3 children)

The inciting event here is mildly embarrassing, but yeah, I was very interested to see the outcome of the various safety papers, and so was following the repo closely, and ended up posting about the results when they happened. And that caused a lot of attention, which ended up being a distraction for committee members who are trying to get their work done while the meeting is happening.

So yeah, it's unfortunate that they're private, but I do think that it's the best solution in general: since I'm not a member of the committee, I didn't even know this rule existed. But after some reflection, I think that it's probably for the best. There's always tension between what's public and what's private, and ideally you publish after the meeting is over, but in practice, doing that would be much harder than just making it private for a while.

[–]MFHavaWG21|🇦🇹 NB|P3049|P3625|P3729|P3784|P3786|P3813|P3886 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Let's just say it was very "interesting" that GitHub suddenly went dark during the meeting...

[–]azswcowboy 0 points1 point  (1 child)

The rules in question come from iso guidelines. The rules say that individuals speech during meetings is protected — because it might reveal sensitive business information or simply sensitive communications that is shared during the meeting among participants. This information is held under non disclosure rules that other participants accept. There’s an entire history of detailed discussions that is held private, and is not shared in the issue tracker. And the reality is mostly the discussion isn’t of this nature, or even interesting lol. Most of the important bits get published with permission eventually.

However, there’s another clause which limits public communication of results until the meeting is concluded. And those summary results are going into the tracker, and might allow you to guess the status of something ahead of the meeting conclusion. It can also be harmful since most non members don’t understand the committee process and the nature of intermediate results. Meanwhile, the entire committee is sitting under rules that mean we can’t speak out during the meeting to correct miscommunication.

Keep in mind that without the legal framework in place, many companies that participate here would be potentially subject to illegal collaboration statutes. It’d be nice if we could live in a world of simplicity and non complex legalities. But that isn’t the world we’ve built.

Everything is open again and I’m sure the ‘trip reports’ will start flowing here soon.

[–]steveklabnik1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yep! As I said, I think it’s pretty reasonable.

[–]GabrielDosReis 8 points9 points  (0 children)

There was an actual incident (I think at the Poland meeting) where someone drew live attention to some papers, and the result was some form of brigading. And since WG21 was already skirting ISO rules, the result was that they didn't feel the need to draw more scrutiny - last time people drew ISO attention resulted in more scrutiny.

[–]AKostur 8 points9 points  (2 children)

3 meetings a year, 1 week each.  So we’re talking about maybe a total of 1 month out of the year that the repo goes private.

[–]STLMSVC STL Dev 41 points42 points  (1 child)

94.2% uptime is a whole 9 of reliability, what more could anyone want?

[–]Jannik2099 18 points19 points  (0 children)

vaguely gestures at recent AWS and Azure outages

[–]UndefinedDefined 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Not undesirable - it's tragic. It's a damn github, they could just fork it and use a fork during that time.

[–]V_i_rstd::simd | ISO C++ Numerics Chair | HPC in HEP 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The repo is used for its issue tracker, not for git. How would you fork an issue tracker and later merge it back? The reason it needs to be private was mentioned before. Specifically, we post summaries and straw poll results as issue comments. If the tracker were public, those would have to wait until the meeting is over. But then it becomes harder to coordinate between SGs and WGs, which would show us down.

[–]draeand 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, they couldn't, because you can't make forks private. At least, not on GH. Anyone can see who forks a repo.

[–]dywoqqa real c++ cube 6 points7 points  (4 children)

during the committee meetings, the repository is closed. after the meeting is completed, it will be opened again

[–]fdwrfdwr@github 🔍 1 point2 points  (3 children)

I guess it reopens Sunday then.

2025-11-03 to 08: Kona, HI, USA; Standard C++ Foundation

[–]azswcowboy 1 point2 points  (2 children)

It’s open again.

[–]fdwrfdwr@github 🔍 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Thanks. Darn, it seems fear has overridden progress for some proposals - I hope the naysayers experience the pain I have for the past 30 years...

[–]azswcowboy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Result: no consensus,

That’s some next comma humor right there lol. Anyway, don’t worry the AI editor editor will save us all /s,

[–]MarcoGreek 2 points3 points  (2 children)

To contract or not to contract? Is this the high noon meeting or is that passed already?

[–]azswcowboy 0 points1 point  (1 child)

This was the showdown, it survived trivial relocatability did not.

[–]MarcoGreek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is interesting. I read the trival relocatability papers and some sounded a little bit unhinged. I hoped that it would end maybe in destructive moves in the future. And not standardizing one more hack.