All of these documents (in fact, this entire homepage set) are bundled with the library source, under the docs subdirectory, for releases and snapshots. The sole exception is the automatically-generated source documentation, available separately.

Introduction

This is a short list of text files pertaining to this implementation of ISO 14882. A brief description may follow the name of the file.

• License - GPL v2 license terms
• ABI Policy and Guidelines
• BUGS
• PROBLEMS - target-specific known issues
• README - directory structure
• RELEASE-NOTES - latest version info, recent changes and news
• TODO - tasks yet undone
• FAQ (HTML), FAQ (text)

Configuring, Building, Installing

• Configure options
• Getting started: configure, build, install
• Debugging schemes and strategies

Source-Level Documentation

The library sources have been specially formatted so that with the proper invocation of another tool (Doxygen), a set of HTML pages are generated from the sources files themselves. The resultant documentation is referred to as Source-Level Documentation, and is useful for examining the signatures of public member functions for the library classes, finding out what is in a particular include file, looking at inheritance diagrams, etc.

The Source-Level documentation can be viewed online:

• for the 3.1 release
• for the 3.2.1 release
• "the latest collection" (for the snapshot or later; see the date on the first page)

This generated HTML collection, as above, is also available for download in the libstdc++ snapshots directory at <URL:ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/libstdc++/doxygen/>. You will almost certainly need to use one of the mirror sites to download the tarball. After unpacking, simply load libstdc++-html-*/index.html into a browser. Feedback (and additional documentation!) is welcome.

In addition, an initial set of man pages are also available in the same place as the HTML collections. Start with C++Intro(3).

Chapter-Specific Documentation

Information, extensions, notes and advice on specific implementation capabilites and/or liabilities broken down into chapter names based on the C++ standard.

• Library Introduction (Chapter 17)
  • The Standard C++ header files
  • The Standard C++ library and multithreading
  • <foo> vs <foo.h>
  • Porting HOWTO
  • Behavior specific to libstdc++-v3
  • Preprocessor macros controlling the library
• Library Support (Chapter 18)
  • Types
  • Implementation properties
  • Start and Termination
  • Dynamic memory management
  • RTTI, the ABI, and demangling
• Diagnostics (Chapter 19)
  • Adding data to exceptions
  • Exception class hierarchy diagram
  • Concept checkers -- new and improved!
  • Verbose terminate
• General Utilities (Chapter 20)
  • auto_ptr is not omnipotent
  • auto_ptr inside container classes
  • Functors
  • Pairs
• Strings (Chapter 21)
  • MFC's CString
  • A case-insensitive string class
  • Breaking a C++ string into tokens
  • Simple transformations
  • Making strings of arbitrary character types
• Localization (Chapter 22)
  • class locale
  • class codecvt
  • class ctype
  • class messages
  • Bjarne Stroustrup on Locales
  • Nathan Myers on Locales
  • Correct Transformations
• Containers (Chapter 23)
  • Making code unaware of the container/array difference
  • Variable-sized bitmasks
  • Containers and multithreading
  • "Hinting" during insertion
  • Bitmasks and string arguments
  • std::list::size() is O(n)!
  • Space overhead management for vectors
• Iterators (Chapter 24)
  • They ain't pointers!
  • It ends where?
• Algorithms (Chapter 25)
  • Prerequisites
  • Special swaps
• Numerics (Chapter 26)
  • Complex Number Processing
  • Array Processing
  • Numerical Functions
  • C99
• Input/Output (Chapter 27)
  • Copying a file
  • The buffering is screwing up my program!
  • Binary I/O
  • What is this <sstream>/stringstreams thing?
  • Deriving a stream buffer
  • More on binary I/O
  • Pathetic performance? Ditch C.
  • Threads and I/O
  • Which header?
  • Using FILE*s and file descriptors with IOStreams
• Extensions to the Standard Library
  • Ropes and trees and hashes, oh my!
  • Added members and types
  • Allocators (versions 3.0, 3.1, 3.2)
  • Allocators (version 3.3)
  • Compile-time checks
  • LWG Issues
  • Demangling

Contributor-Specific Information

• Contributor checklist
• Copyright assignment form for libstdc++-v3
• Getting CVS write access (look for "Write after approval")
• BADNAMES - names to avoid because of potential collisions
• C++STYLE - coding style by example
• CHECKLIST - a list of required features and their status.
• DESIGN - overview of the implementation plan
• HEADER_POLICY - header naming and sub-include structure

Return to the libstdc++ homepage.

See license.html for copying conditions. Comments and suggestions are welcome, and may be sent to the libstdc++ mailing list.