Welcome to pkg-fmt Discussions!

[bretbrownjr]

👋 Welcome!

The broad objective of this project is to improve the C and C++ ecosystem with respect to packaging. The participants think it's time to improve cross-project interop by defining metadata file formats that can be leveraged and respected by various tools, especially packaging and build systems.

The goal for enabling discussions on this repository is to allow more direct collection and discussion of relevant issues, concerns, and ideas. Especially open questions and ideas that still need consideration and thought should go here. Ideas that are more specific could be issues or pull requests instead.

This sort of workflow is not new to C++ engineers, but it is a bit new for projects that attempt ecosystem-wide advancement of C++ itself. We expect to better meet expectations for collaboration culture and habits with generally familiar github mechanisms like discussions, issues, and pull requests. As the technology in this project gets more settled, tested, and even adopted, ideas will be proposed in the more formal context of ISO C++ study groups and working groups. It's expected that we will take broad concerns and eventually turn them into specific standards in that manner.

Given those broad concerns are so varied, it is expected that discussion threads will be helpful and will take the place of mechanisms like email lists.

If you would like to engage with this project, including in its discussions and issues, please review the Code of Conduct for this project. If you have concerns or ideas about the conduct in these discussions, please reach out to the contacts listed there.

To get started, feel free comment below with an introduction of yourself. Please mention any communities you are affiliated with for transparency. Well behaved participants can stay anonymous or pseudonymous in the context of github discussions, but note that carrying work forward into the sphere of ISO standardization does require use of real names, etc.

[tylerjw]

I would like to help in any way I can. I have experience working in the ROS packageing ecosystem which is largely based on debian tooling.

[mwasplund]

I am still trying to figure out all the possible places these discussions are taking place (DLs, Slack, GitHub, closed rooms, ...), but figured I would introduce myself here again.

Hello, my name is Matthew Asplund, currently I work at Microsoft where I have had a lot of experience working with NPM and Nuget packaging and build systems. I have long been frustrated with the lack of package managers in C++ (it is improving!) and have created my own build system to answer the question, "What would I want in my ideal C++ build and package manager system?"

I would like to help contribute in any ways I can to this effort.

Aside: It would be useful for us new folk to get introductions from those who are already involved. I am having a hard time tracking who is working on what, where and why 😄

[grafikrobot]

Welcome @mwasplund. Introductions are a good idea. I'm René Ferdinand Rivera Morell, and I wear many hats. In addition to being an "admin" in this repo I also: am in the board of the C++ Alliance, member of WG21 (various SGs), get paid to work at Disbelief LLC programming AAA games, Boost Predef author, B2 (https://www.bfgroup.xyz/b2/) (aka Boost Build) maintainer for multiple decades, Conan contributor, Lyra library author, and a variety of other random things.

Perhaps a brief overview of the communications channels is in order also:

• This repo and discussion; Open to everyone, is mainly for talking about creating a build system package manager interop format. As such we expect a specification, implementations, and discussions related to that.
• WG21/SG15 Tooling; Open to WG21 members, is for discussion of concrete proposals for standardization. Currently there are two main bodies of work in that group the "C++ Modules Ecosystem Technical Report" (https://wg21.link/P1688) and the "C++ Ecosystem International Standard" (https://wg21.link/P2656). The work in this repo is planned to fit into the Ecosystem IS eventually.
• CppLang #ecosystem_evolution channel (https://cpplang.slack.com/archives/C05KA1B6PNX); Open to everyone, is the latest and is meant to facilitate discussions for anything ecosystem related, and hopefully on things that are related to the Ecosystem IS.

Last item about myself.. At a conference last Fall I volunteered to implement the format(s) discussed here in B2 and in Boost to produce such files for Boost distributions to be consumed by others.