On splitting headers (Re:Objectionstoremovingtheoldsmartpointerclasstemplates?)

From: vesa_karvonen (vesa_karvonen_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-02-07 03:00:00

--- In boost_at_y..., Sean Parent <sparent_at_a...> wrote:
>I spent several months a couple of years speeding up the build of
>Photoshop. [interesting story snipped]

We've had a similar experience at work. Currently all of our template 
libraries define 3 kinds of headers:

- fwd.h, which contains all forward declarations of the public 
interface of the library
- xxx_def.h, which contains the class definition of class template xxx
- xxx_impl.h, which contains the implementation of class template xx

Unfortunately as we've been using this practice since 1999 it is 
difficult to see how much it affect compile times (as there is 
nothing in our active code base to compare to). Thanks for affirming 
us that it does indeed have a major effect!