CppCon 2016

At CppCon 2015 we introduced the Guideline Support Library (GSL): a set of portable vocabulary types for use constructing safe and efficient C++ programs. This talk looks at how the library has evolved in the course of one year. The talk will provide a brief review of the current set of facilities in the library, where it is available, how to build and contribute. Then the talk will look at how the library changed in response to feedback and contributions from the user community, as well as from the ISO C++ Working Group as parts of the library move through the standardization process for inclusion in the C++ standard library. The talk will cover lessons learned about how to optimize key parts of the library - such as the span<T> type - in the compiler, and what had to change in the library implementation to support this. It will present some examples of these optimizations and discuss performance of span<T>. Finally, the talk will include a status report on notable places the library is being used and preview what might be next for the GSL.