Re: [boost] [type_traits] is_convertible<noncopyable,To> crashes

From: John Maddock (john_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-04-14 06:13:03

JOAQUIN LOPEZ MU?Z wrote:
> Hello,
>
> In a post from yesterday (see http://tinyurl.com/hzk5w),
> Alexei Alexandrov found a rather serious problem with
> is_convertible in at least MSVC 7.1 and Intel 9.0, namely
> that is_convertible<From,To> fails to compile when
>> From is non-copyable, emitting an error message like this:
>
> boost/boost/type_traits/is_convertible.hpp(254): error:
> class "XXX" has no suitable copy constructor
>       BOOST_STATIC_CONSTANT(bool, value =
> ...
>
> where XXX is the From argument. Needless to say, some
> fix for this issue would be most welcome. I'm sorry
> I cannot provide any more help than a mere report
> of the problem.
>
> Thank you,

Using the trivial code below I'm *unable* to reproduce this: it's compiles 
cleanly with all the compilers I've tried (including Intel 9 and VC7.1).

However.... there is a long history of is_convertible doing strange things 
under very specific circumstances with VC7.1 (and of course Intel emulate 
VC's bugs).

Indeed the VC-specific implementation relies on undefined behaviour: passing 
UDT's through a function with elipsis, and it's this that appears to be 
causing the problem in this case.  There are alternative implementations of 
is_convertible - almost one per compiler in fact, which shows how much 
trouble it's caused in the past - that do not rely on this undefined 
behaviour, and do not pass UDT's through elipsis, and so should not have 
this problem.  Unfortunately these implementations could not be used with 
VC++ because even though they pass all our type-traits regression tests, 
they cause strange and unexplained failures deep within certain 
instantiation contexts.  Sound familiar?

Anyway, trivial test case follows,

John.

#include <boost/type_traits.hpp>
#include <boost/noncopyable.hpp>

class bar : private boost::noncopyable
{
};

template <bool b>
class foo
{
public:
static const bool value = b;
};

typedef foo< ::boost::is_convertible<bar, int>::value> foo_t;

const bool b = foo_t::value;