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2 posts tagged with "memory safety"

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Boosting C++ Memory Safety with Parallel Builds and Shared Configurations

· 6 min read
Christopher McArthur
C++ DevOps Expert

C++ grants developers immense power, but with it comes the greater responsibility of managing memory. Memory leaks and access violations can bring down even the most robust applications. To combat these issues, sanitizers like AddressSanitizer (ASan) and LeakSanitizer (LSan) are invaluable tools. When it comes to addressing security, this is only the tip of the iceberg; you are expected to do more but sanitizers are an approachable starting pointing.

Despite these obvious upsides 50% of developers don't leverage these tools, integrating them into the build process often raises concerns about increased build times. This blog post explores a strategy to leverage modern build tools and parallelization to achieve exceptional memory safety without sacrificing CI speed.

Breaking down the 2024 Survey Results

· 13 min read
Christopher McArthur
C++ DevOps Expert

It's that time of year once again! The ISO Committee published the summary of the results for the C++ Developer Survey "Lite". This has been running for several years and it's probably the first time we can start to see some trends... hopefully!

The survey results, with less than 1300 developers compared to 1700 last year, is only partially explained by third-party restrictions as noted by the blog post sharing the results. Regardless a wider sample would be ideal. The dominance of CMake with an 83% market share is striking. Could this 4% growth be linked to the lower burden for managing build scripts? Despite these limitations, the survey offers valuable insights into C++ ecosystem trends.

Since this blog is all about building and shipping C++ software, I'll be focusing on the tooling and ecosystem questions and results. There's a natural bias here, as I'm particularly interested in how these trends affect developers like us. But fear not, there's plenty for everyone! In fact, I'm curious what aspects other bloggers will delve into. Let's jump right in as there are some fascinating statistical correlations to explore!