[boost] random, VC7 and BOOST_NO_LIMITS_COMPILE_TIME_CONSTANTS

From: Michael Stevens (michael_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-10-16 01:18:10

Hi everyone,

Jens has been making a few changes to Boost random recently. These 
include a lot of additional static asserts such as

#ifndef BOOST_NO_LIMITS_COMPILE_TIME_CONSTANTS
  BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(std::numeric_limits<result_type>::is_signed);
  BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(std::numeric_limits<result_type>::is_integer);
#endif

The wrapper should disable the assert for nasty compilers. However...

VC7 seems to have a bizare problem with these. The macro is not define, 
because in the normal case the compile time constants do work. However 
if the limits type parameter is a template parameter they don't work. 
This little example shows the problem.

// Test VC7 Limit
#include <boost/limits.hpp>
#include <boost/static_assert.hpp>

BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(std::numeric_limits<int>::is_integer);            // OK

template <class IntType>
class fred
{
  static const bool x = std::numeric_limits<IntType>::is_integer;
  BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(std::numeric_limits<int>::is_integer);        // OK
  BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT(std::numeric_limits<IntType>::is_integer);    // 
FAILS on definition of template!
};

This little beauty is stoping the current random implementation from 
compiling. Obvious solution is to enable 
BOOST_NO_LIMITS_COMPILE_TIME_CONSTANTS for VC7.

Any ideas?
 Michael