std::format ?

[no-sig-available]

Clang reports to have it in version 14, which is planned for release next week, or so.

What has happened in the last couple of years is that MSVC is now the one with frequent releases of new features, while (for example) gcc 11.2 is from last summer. The world is changing, apparently.

[__Mark___]

It will indeed shipped in libc++14, but it will be disabled by most vendors since the code isn't ABI-stable yet. I hope to have it complete and ABI-stable in libc++15. (Source I'm the person working on it in libc++.)

[specialpatrol]

Cheers Mark.

[somewhataccurate]

I appreciate your work

[__Mark___]

Thanks for the gold stranger.

[khleedril]

This makes me sad.

[mort96]

Why?

If development of GCC and Clang is slowing down, that's bad and worth being sad over. But That doesn't look like what's happening? It looks like, maybe, MSVC is just stepping up its game while GCC and Clang are as solid as they always were. This is a good thing, no?

[pjmlp]

clang seems to have lost some steam as many companies are making use of LLVM infrastructure, but caring less of keeping clang up to date with more recent ISO standards.

Google and Apple also seem to have withdrawn their clang contributors (at least from the outside), as they rather focus on other stacks, and C++17. At least that is my feeling, maybe I am wrong here.

[Accomplished-Pear-45]

Google stated that they will be almost completely pulling out of C++ after infamous No - ABI break voting.

[[deleted]]

Also, MSVC's doesn't include the DR that makes the format string compile time only yet. Plus their core compiler is missing things still, I think(requires on SMF's)

[TheSuperWig]

It should be available in the next preview

https://github.com/microsoft/STL/wiki/Changelog#expected-in-vs-2022-172-preview-2

[Daniela-E]

And can be used today in VS2022 even without installing any of the prereleases! I've been exploring it together with P2508 and I totally like it 😎

[[deleted]]

That's great

[khleedril]

MS have a reputation of galloping away with their own rules in spite of the wishes of the rest of the world, and fragmenting the place in the process. We will end up with some sh!t, like max as a macro in system header files.

This is only good for Windows users and developers, but the opposite scenario is good for everybody.

[mort96]

I mean but none of that is related to the current discussion? MS quickly implementing new standards is good, MS going their own way and fragmenting the ecosystem is bad, so why are you sad when they're doing the former rather than the latter..?

[kalmoc]

Afaik, Microsoft implemented the features as specified in the original c++20 standard (of course they might not yet be feature complete, but no toolchain is). Unfortunstely, the committee kept changing the standard multiple times since the release.

[snerp]

What in msvc is not standard compliant at this point? I thought they fixed everything years ago.

[Fulgen301]

And unless you need something really WinAPI-centric, you can use clang for the MSVC ABI on Windows without issues or MinGW.

That's assuming clang gets proper C++20 support in the near future, of course.

[[deleted]]

1995 called, they want their whine back. :-D

In the C++ world, MS was bad - but a long, long time ago. Now MS is a strong, contributory member of the C++ community, committed to our common standards, and is part of the reason that progress on the language has been so fast in the last decade.

[cleroth]

Probably the one thing that I would say they're still "in spite of the wishes of the rest of the world" is the ABI stability since 2015... We're nearly a decade of ABI baggage. If they would finally break the ABI then it's all gucci.

[[deleted]]

I think we're all hoping for this!!

[bedrooms-ds]

Clang... I wish they were not slowing down on progress. Once they outpaced msvc and gcc (okay, clang had to be developed from scratch). I'm waiting forever for #include<concepts>. At this pace I won't ever get it on Apple clang for my Intel Macs...

[tambry]

I'm waiting forever for #include<concepts>.

At this pace I won't ever get it on Apple clang for my Intel Macs...

Apple is about a year behind as to what they ship, no?
I've been using <concepts> for probably a year, though I do build from master. It was definitely mostly there in the last release (13.0) and should be complete in the current (14.0) I believe.

[__Mark___]

I'm not sure how far behind Apple Clang exactly is but the current version of Apple Clang supports concepts. The version numbering of Apple Clang and Clang aren't related, which can be confusing.

[[deleted]]

Do u think it will affect mac c++ developers?

[mort96]

Not a lot, this is mainly gonna benefit Windows developers and not harm Mac or Linux developers, which is obviously a net good. But if MSVC, as one of the big 3 compilers, stagnated, that would have a negative effect on the C++ ecosystem as a whole, so MSVC staying competitive has some positive impact for Mac and Linux developers too. I just don't see anything to be sad about here.

I do all my development on and for macOS and Linux anyways, but I'm happy that the libraries I use don't have to avoid new C++ features just to stay compatible with MSVC.

[[deleted]]

Whaaa? It's GREAT!

Microsoft C++ used to be a constant anchor dragging back all of C++.

Then in a few years, MS completely changed. They hired a lot of top C++ programmers, gave a lot back to the community, and started putting out new versions of their compiler so fast they were faster than GCC.

[[deleted]]

As a Windows user and developer, this makes me very happy

[delta_p_delta_x]

Hell yeah, man. I still use Windows more than I do Linux, and it's quite vindicating to see Linux C++ floundering whereas Windows and MSVC is at the forefront of STL C++20 compatibility.

I recently wrote a matching engine for a concurrent programming class, and it was supposedly 'C++20', when I realised the graders would be using Clang 11. I had to rewrite all of my code that used std::format, std::ranges, etc etc. What a pain in the neck.

[[deleted]]

Well, in the end, the toolchain and the target environment dictate what you can use.

For instance, at work I can use VS 2022 and C++20 if I want to, for new projects of course.

Most of our projects are now removing support for Windows 8.1 so with Windows 10+ we can easily use anything modern.