Re: [boost] [SoC] Boost.Extensios enhancements and Reflection

From: Jeremy Pack (rostovpack_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-03-15 13:41:47

>
>
> This all sounds reasonable.  A question though, when you spec of
> reflection,
> are you talking about 'full dynamic reflection' -- something like:
>
> http://www.vollmann.com/pubs/meta/meta/meta.html
>
> because that would be a nice addition to Boost by itself...or is it
> something
> more limited?

I guess that depends on what the community wants, and what Mariano thinks he
can handle in the limited time. Full dynamic reflection wouldn't reuse much
of the existing code in Boost.Extension. It would certainly be possible to
provide a facility for generating and compiling (using Boost.Build probably)
linked libraries at runtime, then using the Boost.Extension mechanisms to
access it. Or, it could just be fully dynamic classes with fully dynamic
methods, as described in the first part of the paper you mentioned.

The method that would fit best with Boost.Extension would probably be the
ability to instantiate classes that are not derived from known (that is,
known to the instantiator) base classes, and then discover functions that
can be called on them.

Any other thoughts on this?