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Comment by throwawaty76543 | Hacker News Reader

> The sensible way to speed up compilation 5x was implemented almost 10 years ago, worked amazingly well, and was completely ignored. I don't expect progress from the standards committees. Here it is if you're interested: https://github.com/yrnkrn/zapcc

Of course it was completely ignored. Did you expect the standards committee to enforce caching in compilers? That's just not its job.

> The next major advance to be completely ignored by standards committees will be the 100% memory safe C/C++ compiler, which is also implemented and works amazingly well: https://github.com/pizlonator/fil-c

Again—do you expect the standards committee to enforce usage of this compiler or what? The standards commitee doesn't "standardize" compilers...

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Both zapcc and Fil-C could benefit from the involvement of the standards committee. While both are very compatible, there are certain things that they can't fully support and it would be useful to standardize small language changes for their benefit (and for the benefit of other implementations of the same ideas). Certainly more useful than anything else the standards committees have done in the past 10 years. They would also benefit from the increased exposure that standardization would bring, and the languages would benefit from actual solutions to the problems of security and compile time that C/C++ developers face every day.

The standards committee's job is not to develop products like software packages for free. It is to ensure that the language meets the requirements of stakeholders, many of whom develop competing commercial products.

Of course, these tools are of interest to the broader C++ community. Thanks for sharing.

I'm not asking the standards committees to develop them for free. They were already developed! I'm saying that the committees should acknowledge their existence, and the fact that they solve some of C/C++'s biggest problems, in some ways better than the committee-blessed solutions. They deserve attention from the committees to direct language evolution in ways that support them better and encourage alternative implementations.

> 'm not asking the standards committees to develop them for free. They were already developed!

That's great to hear. It sounds like you have everything set to put together a proposal. Do you have any timeline in mind to present something?

> I'm saying that the committees should acknowledge their existence, (...)

Oh does this mean any of the tools you're praising was already proposed to be included in the standard? Do you mind linking to the draft proposal? It's a mailing list, and all it takes is a single email, so it should be easy to link.

Where's the link?

https://isocpp.org/std/submit-a-proposal

I was referring to this:

>Both zapcc and Fil-C could benefit from the involvement of the standards committee.

What exactly does the standards committee do for these software projects without being involved in their development? I think there is nothing to do here that is within the scope of the language itself. Of course, if the creators of those projects come up with a cool new idea, they can submit to the standards committee for comment. They can also comment on new standards that make the tools not work anymore. But that is help going from the project to the committee, not the other way around.

> Both zapcc and Fil-C could benefit from the involvement of the standards committee.

I think there is a hefty deal of ignorance in your comment. A standardization process is not pull-based, it's push-based.

If you feel you have a nice idea that has technical legs to stand, you write your idea down and put together a proposal and then get in touch with committee members to present it.

The process is pretty open.

> Certainly more useful than anything else the standards committees have done in the past 10 years.

Do you understand the "standards committee" is comprised of people like you and me, except they got off their rear-end and actually contribute to it? You make it sound like they are a robe-wearing secret society that is secluded from the world.

Seriously, spend a few minutes getting acquainted with the process, what it takes to become a member, and what you need to do to propose something.

FWIW tooling being as important as it is, it always seems like a mistake to me that the standard committee doesn't standardize compilers.

> Of course it was completely ignored. Did you expect the standards committee to enforce caching in compilers? That's just not its job.

There are also quite a few compiler cache systems around.

For example, anyone can onboard tools like ccache by installing it and setting an environment variable.

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