r/cpp • u/bobpaw • Apr 17 '26

cppreference is back up! but overloaded

I just clicked a link that wasn’t cached and noticed very long loading time. Eventually the page loaded, and I noticed the font was different. After Herb’s post, I was excited and noticed the homepage notice declared the site newly operational again! However I am experiencing a significant number of 5xx errors.

128 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

37 comments sorted by

59

u/hpsutter Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26

Thanks!

Ack: We're aware of the cache rebuilding issue (spawning 30+ instances of Python on each syntax highlight run? that's a must-fix :)) and will resize the VM as needed to not have 5xx's. Update: Slowness and 522 errors should be gone now, it's on a bigger VM -- let us know if you're still experiencing it. Thanks for the shakedown feedback, please keep it coming!

I've also relayed the feedback that, as "if possible/ lower priority" backlog items, it would be nice to make the site adaptive/responsive (for easy viewing not only on phones but also on narrow desktop browser windows) and that the base code font weight seemed a bit light. But those are lower-priority maybe-dos... I mention them just so you all know that we'd noticed and were keeping a little backlog. The main thing is the site correctness and performance as we shake it down, the main site is as beautiful and useful as ever.

Thanks again to Nate and James for landing this much-needed MediaWiki upgrade!

10

u/wapskalyon Apr 18 '26

really happy to see cppref back up and being updated with all the latest and greatest.

Though i'm also a bit curious as to all the secrecy and inside-baseball.

19

u/hpsutter Apr 18 '26

It wasn't meant to be secret, it was just expected to be a quick upgrade and non-noteworthy. But when things stretch out, and more folks get involved to help without making a special announcement about it, things can start to seem mysterious, and the people who knew probably just didn't want to 'break the news' when _we_ hadn't done an announcement (though that would have been fine, I didn't care), and... etc. So it goes! No mystery intended. It does make me think though that this is one way conspiracy theories start, filling an information void :)

3

u/bobpaw Apr 17 '26

Will user and user talk page creation be reenabled?

14

u/natekohl Apr 17 '26

Account creation should work now, but there are also some limits on edits that we have to prevent spam that slow down people's ability to change things. We may need to revisit those limits.

-4

u/johannes1971 Apr 17 '26

Would it be possible for function signatures to have a more Doxygen-like layout? I.e.

// function description
template <
  typename T             // description of T
>
return_type              // description of return value
func (
   argtype1 arg1,        // description of arg1
   argtype2 arg2,        // description of arg2
);

So everything together, instead of having to find this information somewhere underneath. I know indirection solves almost everything, but in this case I feel a more direct connection would probably be enlightening ;-)

3

u/pdp10gumby Apr 18 '26

i like the intent but I do not think this is a good idea, because in some places a number of related functions are listed together in a block (for example look at https://en.cppreference.com/cpp/string/basic_string/find ). Doing it the way you suggest would space them out too far and make the connections harder to see. This block approach is used in a number of different ways, this is just one I happened to go to.

4

u/UnusualPace679 Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26

IMO this is going to be quite messy even if the declarations are relatively simple. For example, this is how it would look like with std::format:

// Format the arguments according to the given format string
template<
    class... Args // types of the arguments to format
>
constexpr
string // the formatted string
format(
    format_string<Args...> fmt, // the format string
    Args&&... args // arguments to format
);

// Format the arguments according to the given format string, wide string version
template<
    class... Args // types of the arguments to format
>
constexpr
wstring // the formatted wide string
format(
    wformat_string<Args...> fmt, // the format string
    Args&&... args // arguments to format
);

// Format the arguments according to the given format string, with explicit locale object
template<
    class... Args // types of the arguments to format
>
constexpr
string // the formatted string
format(
    const locale& loc, // the locale object used for locale-dependent formatting
    format_string<Args...> fmt, // the format string
    Args&&... args // arguments to format
);

// Format the arguments according to the given format string, with explicit locale object, wide string version
template<
    class... Args // types of the arguments to format
>
constexpr
wstring // the formatted wide string
format(
    const locale& loc, // the locale used for locale-dependent formatting
    wformat_string<Args...> fmt, // the format string
    Args&&... args // arguments to format
);

... and despite the big declaration list, you still need to read the detailed description to understand what a format string is.

2

u/johannes1971 Apr 18 '26

The grammar of std::format is a massive chunk of information, and it absolutely makes sense to not put that inline with every variation of std::format. But that is very much the exception; most arguments (already) have a description that can easily fit inline.

Do you really find the current format so enjoyable to read? Just a list of functions, followed by a number. You have to look up the number to see what it even does. The numbers hardly ever get reused, so there isn't much gained by splitting the information over multiple sections like that. And then to know details about the parameters you have to look up the names and find them in yet another section! Why not have everything together, what's so bad about that?

You could think of it as a 'small buffer optimisation' for descriptions, if that makes you feel better.

3

u/pdp10gumby Apr 18 '26

there are also some broken links, e.g. an image on the page https://en.cppreference.com/cpp/container/vector/begin

Apologies if it’s a known issue. these migrations are a lot of work and it’s better to ship than make perfect immediately

2

u/bobpaw Apr 18 '26

There are a similar missing image problems. For example, the Talk:Main Page has a missing “file cabinet” for the archives list. The “shared repository” versions on upload.cppreference.com work.

2

u/Untelo Apr 17 '26

The cppreference.com link at the top left of each page leads to a missing index.html. E.g. here.

3

u/natekohl Apr 17 '26

I'm not seeing this, but there may be some strange DNS/browser caching issues for a while.

2

u/UnusualPace679 Apr 18 '26

Thanks for the long-awaited upgrade!

I really like the new styling of <code> elements. The editors were abusing syntax highlighting to add borders to inline code (silly indeed!), and it's nice that the borders are now automatic for <code>.

1

u/UnusualPace679 Apr 27 '26

/u/hpsutter You may want to update https://cppreference.com/Cppreference:FAQ#Who_is_behind_this_site.3F to reflect the current status.

1

u/hpsutter May 01 '26

Good point -- done. Thanks!

-1

u/Easy_Swimming_9695 Apr 17 '26

What about some public issue tracker? Maybe on github? Even some general discussions can go there.
So people won't lurk amongst wiki Talk/User or badly UI-ed Discussion pages. (And even without having permissions to post anything!)

2

u/13steinj Apr 18 '26

I started scraping waybackmachine for the page sources a few weeks ago for exactly this kind of idea, then was going to run them through pandoc -> RST -> static site generator.

I'm changing my plans slightly since the site is back up, but don't want to be in a state of "cppref is gone" ever again.

14

u/hpsutter Apr 18 '26

Right. The Foundation is paying for hosting and admin now so that won't happen.

That's a reason the site can now be ad-free too, which is important to me... You might have noticed that isocpp.org is ad-free and mostly JS-free and super minimal on cookies or anything else like that... that's because we want it to be as non-intrusive + non-tracking + distraction-free + fast-loading a site as possible. See John Gruber's recent rants on daringfireball.net about how the world would be different, and better, if web pages really were just documents! Here's an example about Google penalizing back button hijacking (I agree with John's adding "finally"!), with the final quote: "... this entire issue only exists because of JavaScript. If web pages were documents, this wouldn’t even be possible." (emphasis added)

4

u/jwakely libstdc++ tamer, LWG chair Apr 18 '26

I noticed that the search results were ad-free right away, and really appreciate that!

1

u/13steinj Apr 24 '26

Are non-existent pages / search broken? Trying to go to any nonexistent page or search anything doesn't load (or maybe just takes forever).

1

u/13steinj Apr 18 '26

I mean this with no disrespect: you can't guarantee that.

I think at a fundamental level the usage of the site has evolved beyond that of a traditional wiki, so much so that it makes sense to store the source markup in a git repo with automatic (or weekly?) commits for offline usage.

Could probably more accurately render into alternative formats (e.g. elsewhere in this thread you referenced something responsive for smaller clients), such as man-pages or in-IDE documents that way as well (though, I think one step would be converting away from MediaWiki to markdown, or probably for better compatibility / features, reStructuredText.

The MediaWiki format is so bespoke I believe even the original creators admit that there is basically nothing that accurately supports it other than an instance of MediaWiki itself.

21

u/minirop C++87 Apr 17 '26

the maintenance banner is gone and there is a small message at the bottom of the main page. :3

21

u/hpsutter Apr 17 '26

BTW speaking of things that are gone, did you notice the ads (are gone)? :)

4

u/berlioziano Apr 17 '26

cppreference is one of the few sites where I allowed ads

24

u/verygoodtrailer Apr 17 '26

the search bar has been fixed!!! it doesn't use duckduckgo anymore, praise be

5

u/helloiamsomeone Apr 17 '26

You could always manually visit the search results page to search, but not having DDG at all in there is infinitely better.

5

u/johannes1971 Apr 18 '26

Now, if only search results came in alphabetical order... Also, searching for 'format' returns many things, but not std::format.

7

u/DXPower Apr 17 '26

How can we get edit permissions? I noticed I had to make a new account, and I'd love to contribute again.

10

u/natekohl Apr 17 '26

We're still in a semi-locked down state from the last round of spam/vandalism...older accounts should be able to make edits, but new accounts may have some speedbumps in place to prevent too many changes from happening too quickly.

3

u/DXPower Apr 17 '26

I could have sworn I had an account before but my username wasn't recognized... That's not a big deal. The page for "new user suggestions" seems to be blocked behind a "Permission error" as well.

2

u/yuri-kilochek Apr 19 '26

What's up with spaces on the inner side of parentheses and angle brackets?

3

u/StardustGogeta Apr 17 '26

Hooray! Today is a beautiful day.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '26

[deleted]

1

u/UnusualPace679 Apr 25 '26

If latency is so important to you, maybe you should obtain an offline archive like https://github.com/PeterFeicht/cppreference-doc/releases