Bjarne's C++ Core Guidelines

[Stephen E. Baker]

Bjarne Stroustrup (the creator of C++) has just announced a set of C++
Core Guidelines. You can see the announcement at
https://isocpp.org/blog/2015/09/bjarne-stroustrup-announces-cpp-core-guidelines
and the guidelines themselves at
https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppCoreGuidelines.md

The guidelines are rules to ensure that memory leaks and type safety
issues (among other issues common in C++) cannot occur. It also promotes
a philosophy of clear readable code and checking for errors as soon as
possible. The guideline covers code structure, not naming conventions or
white space usage.

I'm bringing this up because I think it's a good idea that we follow
this development and incorporate it as much as feasible into our code.
The guidelines themselves are quite long and detailed, and subject to
change; my hope is that the people reviewing C++ code at least take the
time to read through it. I also hope that as static code checkers become
available we will incorporate them into our continuous integration and
code review, and suggest that developers use them.

In the short term I'm working on full C++ x11 support in Travis CI,
because several of these ideas depend on C++ x11 support.

Comments welcome,

Stephen E. Baker