[boost] Re: Challenge: persistence/typeid lib

From: Nicola Musatti (objectway_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-04-18 07:54:18

David Abrahams wrote:
> 
> "Nicola Musatti" <objectway_at_[hidden]> wrote in message
> news:3CBBF564.4B957619_at_divalsim.it...
> > Are you aware of Bjarne Stroustrup's work on the XTI (for extended
> type
> > information) library?
[...]
> FWIW, I also am unsure what this has to do with the topic of my post ;-)

Maybe I assumed your message meant what I wanted it to mean. I realize
now that its scope was more limited but also more concrete than what XTI
currently appears to be. I'm aware that a complete and portable
representation for type_info<T>::name() is a fundamental building block
for any piece of software that needs an explicit representation for the
types it uses: this includes persistence libraries as well as, I
suspect, cross language tools.

Still I believe the authors of such tools have to spend quite some time
implementing an explicit data type representation on which to work, be
it runtime based or static, for which type_info<T>::name() is only a
very basic building block. My understanding of XTI leads me to believe
that it might solve once and for all the problem of
extracting/generating the relevant information from source code and also
provide a portable runtime oriented representation. This in turn could
be used to easly generate project specific ones.

I may be wrong, but I assume that XTI can't fail to provide a portable
alternative to type_info<T>::name().

Cheers,
Nicola Musatti