Finally, let me describe the process for submitting proposals
to the committee for new libraries or language features.
First, let me briefly describe the internal organization of
the committee. The committee is subdivided into four
Working Groups: Core, Evolution, Library, and Library
Evolution.
Evolution looks at proposals for new language features at
a high-level: how well do they fit into the design of the
language. Core looks at them at a lower-level: is the
specific wording consistent with the wording of the rest
of the standard.
Library Evolution and Library are analogous to Evolution
and Core, but for the standard libraries rather than for
language features.
In addition, some feature areas have a Study Group which
looks at proposals before sending them to Evolution or
Library Evolution.
So, a language proposal progresses through the following
stages to become standardized:
* the relevant Study Group (if there is one)
* Evolution
* Core
* vote by the full committee
A library proposal progresses in a similar way but goes
through Library Evolution and Library instead.
(This is illustrated very nicely here [1].)
If someone is interested in writing a proposal, here's what to
do:
* Bring up the idea on the std-proposals discussion group [2]
to gauge the community's level of interest.
* Write up an initial draft of the proposal, get some more
feedback on it at std-proposals. This initial draft does
not need to contain standard wording yet.
* Formally submit the proposal. I believe this is done by
emailing the committee's project editor, but I can check up
on this. The proposal will get an Nxxx number and show up
in committee mailing like this one [3].
* Present the proposal to the appropriate Study Group if
one exists, or else to the Evolution Working Group, at a
committee meeting. The committee meets 2-3 times a year,
and the meetings are open for anyone to attend. If you
can't attend in person, you can find someone to champion
the proposal for you.
* It's rare for a Study Group or Evolution to accept a
proposal right away. Most often they will give you feedback
on the proposal and encourage you to write an updated
proposal and come back. Several iterations of this can
happen before Evolution accepts the proposal.
* At some point in this process, standard wording for the
proposal needs to be written. Once Evolution has approved
the proposal, Core will look at the wording. Sometimes
they find problems and send the proposal back to Evolution.
If not, the proposal is ready to be voted on in full
committee. Most proposals pass in full committee after
being approved by Core and Evolution.
(If proposing a library feature rather than a language feature,
replace 'Evolution' with 'Library Evolution' and 'Core' with
'Library' in the above).
OK, that was my last long email :) Feel free to ask me any
questions.
Botond
[1] http://isocpp.org/std/the-committee
[2] https://groups.google.com/a/isocpp.org/forum/#!forum/std-proposals
[3] http://open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG21/docs/papers/2013/#mailing2013-09
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