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Re: [wg14/wg21 liaison] P2961R1 syntax for Contracts: viable for C?

From: Timur Doumler <cpp_at_[hidden]>
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2023 16:35:28 +0300
Hi JeanHeyd and everyone,

> On 5 Oct 2023, at 19:48, JeanHeyd Meneide via Liaison <liaison_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> ---- (With my chair hat ON) ----
>
> If you'd like to get SG22's opinion Officially™, you are more than welcome to say this is important enough to invite a review by SG22. If you picked the [[ ]] attribute syntax it would be more important for SG22 to review it and give feedback (And at that point I would *insist* upon a review and feedback), but if not and the syntax is in a novel location I don't see how we'd need explicit cooperation. (E.g., when C++11 got static_assert(…), we just handled the syntax difference by having _Static_assert(...) in C and piling an extra keyword in <assert.h>.) Same process that Aaron mentioned before: ugly keyword first, normal keyword later. Nothing either Committee can't handle.

Thank you. I believe that it would be very helpful to get SG22' opinion Officially™ in this instance. The reason being that we have a C++ committee meeting soon where we want to decide on the syntax (P2935 or P2961) and for making that decision it would be very helpful to have some feedback from the C committee about which syntax *they* would prefer and why.

So far I have counted four people (Aaron, Niall, JeanHeyd, Jens G) speaking out in favour of the P2961 syntax, and one person (Martin) speaking out in favour of the P2935 (attribute-like) syntax. So it seems that at least this group isn't unanimously in favour of either of the two syntaxes (although the one vote for P2935 was predicated on making contract annotations token-ignorable which is an explicit non-goal for us for C++). So it would be very helpful to have some kind of SG22 poll or decision or record of consensus (or however you do these things!) to say one of three things: "SG22 wants the attribute-like syntax" or "SG22 wants the P296 syntax" or "SG22 is officially undecided".

JeanHeyd, how would we go about inviting a review by SG22, and how long would that take? Our next in-person meeting, where we intend to decide on the syntax, is going to take place in Kona Hawaii on November 6-11, that's one month from now. Is there any chance to get official feedback from SG22 before then?

I greatly appreciate everyone's involvement here to help us get this right. Thank you.

Cheers,
Timur

Received on 2023-10-06 13:35:31