GSL
sentry-native


GSL | sentry-native | |
---|---|---|
23 | 2 | |
6,294 | 430 | |
0.6% | 3.5% | |
7.5 | 8.9 | |
5 days ago | 3 days ago | |
C++ | C | |
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later | MIT License |
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
GSL
-
21st Century C++
I haven't read much from Bjarne but this is refreshingly self-aware and paints a hopeful path to standardize around "the good parts" of C++.
As a C++ newbie I just don't understand the recommended path I'm supposed to follow, though. It seems to be a mix of "a book of guidelines" and "a package that shows you how you should be using those guidelines via implementation of their principles".
After some digging it looks like the guidebook is the "C++ Core Guidelines":
https://isocpp.github.io/CppCoreGuidelines/CppCoreGuidelines
And that I should read it and then:
> use parts of the standard library and add a tiny library to make use of the guidelines convenient and efficient (the Guidelines Support Library, GSL).
Which seems to be this (at least Microsoft's implementation):
https://github.com/microsoft/GSL
And I'm left wondering, is this just how C++ is? Can't the language provide tooling for me to better adhere to its guidelines, bake in "blessed" features and deprecate what Bjarne calls, "the use of low-level, inefficient, and error-prone features"?
-
60 terrible tips for a C++ developer
Already showed you how to use ranges and such above, gsl::final_action is here
-
Backward compatible implementations of newer standards constructs?
For span I would recommend the guideline support library - gsl::span
-
Hey Rustaceans! Got a question? Ask here (20/2023)!
Not sure how things are at this point so you might want to look up with those keywords, but a few years back clang-tidy was one of the suggested tools, or enabling the core guidelines checker in visual studio if you're using that. Maybe using GSL or something similar as well.
-
Hardening C++ with Bjarne Stroustrup
When I want safety guarantees, I use the original and run-time checked gsl::span, rather than std::span. https://github.com/microsoft/GSL .
-
I love building a startup in Rust. I wouldn't pick it again.
Another solution: use std::span (or some alternative implementations if the codebase doesn't use C++20).
-
C++23 “Pandemic Edition” is complete
If you ask me, the GSL [1] alone is a fairly radical departure from C++ that delivers a lot of safety. I don't know if it's gotten much popularity, though. Probably because it introduces a similar disruption like you might find from a brand new programming language.
[1] https://github.com/microsoft/GSL
-
Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale
> With Rust, though, one needs to learn entirely new ideas — things like lifetimes, ownership, and the borrow checker. These are not familiar concepts to most people working in other common languages ... Some of those “new” ideas are, of course, present in other languages — especially functional ones.
With C++, lifetime and ownership are just about as important but unfortunately no one's got your back. You can ignore lifetimes and ownership but you do so at your own peril. And the compiler won't tell you you're doing it wrong because the language wasn't designed for it to do so.
If you want a taste of rust's "mindset" (with respect to limitations imposed by some types) without jumping ship to a new language, try C++'s Guidelines Support Library [1]. It introduces some of the same benefits/friction as switching to rust but without a new language. Opting-in to some of these guidelines might be a gentler way to get some of the benefits of Rust. But it comes with a similarly higher bar.
[1] https://github.com/microsoft/GSL
- Passing a std:: array as a function parameter
-
I created a memory leak using smart pointers
It's also far more verbose than T* or T& (probably intentionally). If you really want a non-nullable pointer, gsl::not_null from the GSL is a good option. Writing your own version is also trivial, if you don't want to add a dependency.
sentry-native
-
Luau Goes Open-Source
I understand what C bindings means - hence my comment about the lowest common denominator. I'm not deeply familiar with the Lua api so I don't feel comfortable commenting on it, but the sentry C api is a prime example. Yes you can use this API from many different languages, including C++, but you end up writing code like this. You almost always lose type safety, RAII, and introduce error prone, verbose code, such as: sentry_value_t debug_crumb = sentry_value_new_breadcrumb("http", "debug crumb"); sentry_value_set_by_key( debug_crumb, "category", sentry_value_new_string("example!")); sentry_value_set_by_key( debug_crumb, "depth", sentry_value_new_int32(11)); sentry_value_set_by_key( debug_crumb, "level", sentry_value_new_string("debug")); sentry_add_breadcrumb(debug_crumb);
-
Goodbye C++, Hello C
> Put another way, I'd rather fix relatively simple C (which also tends to be simpler code in general) than the monsters created by "modern C++" because they thought the "added safety" would mean they could go crazy with the complexity without adding bugs.
It's completely possible to write C++ code without it being a mess of a template mostrosity and massively overloaded function names. People who write C++ like that would write C filled with macros, void pointers and all the other footguns that C encourages you to use instead.
I've been working with the sentry-native SDK recently [0] which is a C api. It's full of macros, unclear ownership of pointers (in their callback, _you_ must manually free the random pointer, using the right free method for their type, which isn't type checked), custom functions for working with their types (sentry_free, sentry_free_envelope), opaque data types (everythign is a sentry_value_t created by a custom function - to access the data you have to call the right function not just access the member, and this is a runtime check).
Compare [1] (their C api example)
[0] https://github.com/getsentry/sentry-native
What are some alternatives?
cppinsights - C++ Insights - See your source code with the eyes of a compiler
breakpad - Mirror of Google Breakpad project
span-lite - span lite - A C++20-like span for C++98, C++11 and later in a single-file header-only library
rust-sourcemap - A library for rust that implements basic sourcemap handling
boost - My personal boost mirror to be submoduled by my projects
sentry-dart - Sentry SDK for Dart and Flutter
CppCoreGuidelines - The C++ Core Guidelines are a set of tried-and-true guidelines, rules, and best practices about coding in C++
score-simple-api-2
C-Golang-like-Defer - Cursed defer() method in C++ achieves similar results as Go's defer keyword.
cJSON - Ultralightweight JSON parser in ANSI C
cpp-core-guidelines-cheatsheet - Cheatsheet for the C++ core guidelines, including a set of tried-and-true guidelines, rules, and best practices about coding in C++.
tl - The compiler for Teal, a typed dialect of Lua

