Re: [boost] Library Proposal: Reflection for C++

From: Stefan Seefeld (seefeld_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-02-04 20:01:57

Sebastian Redl wrote:

> I think the most promising idea would be to combine an existing special 
> representation (e.g. that of Synopsis) with a custom gcc frontend and 
> embed the gcc backend into a library. Intercept the output. A custom 
> linker that is able to link with a running application would probably be 
> needed.

I second what David said: just use the system compiler / linker to produce
a DSO and load that into your process. Anything else is going to be much
more complex.
And, I don't see why you would need Synopsis *and* a custom gcc frontend
(such as gccxml).
You can generate a parse tree (etc.) with synopsis alone, process it either
in C++ or python to generate new code, then call a system (or custom) toolchain
to compile that into a loadable module. If you are doing all this in python
you don't even need to care about ABI compatibility issues.

> Then the only remaining problem is that GCC's license is incompatible 
> with Boost's.

Not a problem if you don't *link* with gcc code (synopsis is distributed
under LGPL).

Regards,
                Stefan