There is an interesting approach to this in Rust: if a potentially breaking change (e.g. a soundness fix) is being proposed, they usually test it against all publicly available Rust code.
It's exactly the flex you might think it is. The point is not in the number, but rather in the fact that you can build and test almost all crates available on almost all supported platforms, regardless of how many there are, and with no human intervention.
For C++, there's no registry to start with, but even if there was: there's no standard way of building and testing projects. So, a crater build like this is simply impossible at a scale.
Note that this tool (crater) is mainly used to catch regressions, not to judge whether it's worth to intentionally break things (which is what editions are for). If many crates depend on the bug which devs want to fix crater will probably detect that and devs will consider other alternatives.
eesmith|2 years ago
At least, I interpret it as saying there isn't much publicly available Rust code, and only a few places to find Rust code.
I have a hard time even estimating how long it would take to test a change against all publicly available C++ code.
FWIW, the C++ standards developers use do use code search tools to help identify possible breakage.
aldanor|2 years ago
For C++, there's no registry to start with, but even if there was: there's no standard way of building and testing projects. So, a crater build like this is simply impossible at a scale.
lifthrasiir|2 years ago
Entalpi|2 years ago
3836293648|2 years ago