Is there a timeframe for the Apple C modules coming to Xcode toolchain?

Question

There’s a presentation by Doug Gregor from Apple about a new modules feature in C, C++ and Objective-C. It feels obvious that this feature is going to end up in the Xcode toolchain. Is there a roadmap, some timeframe or at least some additional information?

Answer 1

This is all speculation

It will probably appear in clang before it is officially adopted into the C++ standard. How else will Apple (or anyone) get experience in how well/poorly modules work without an implementation?

Whether or not Apple will ship an Xcode with this feature enabled is unclear.

The next version of the C++ standard will not appear before 2014 at the earliest.

H2CO3: I agree that Apple is not a big fan of backwards compatibility. IMHO they see it as nice, but not necessary. When the benefits (as they see them) outweigh the costs, then they are willing to break backwards compatibility.

However, from looking at Doug's talk, this (modules) looks like an addition, rather than a change. I don't think that Apple is looking to suddenly break every bit of existing C/C++ code on their platform with this.