Re: [boost] Reflection?

Subject: Re: [boost] Reflection?
From: Jean-Louis Leroy (jl_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-11-03 21:12:51

Jeremy,

> What you want to do would require storing a great deal of extra information,
> in addition to that stored by Boost.Reflection. Since one of my primary
> emphases is performance, I doubt that my library is an ideal framework upon
> which to build what you propose. I would imagine though that much of the
> code could be very useful to you.

Is it so? It's just one extra pointer per field.

Hmm. For what I have in mind I also need to ask to a class what its 
subclasses are...

> Have you looked at GCCXML? It could very well give you much of the
> functionality that you desire (class names, function names and signatures,
> types with data etc.)

It looks nice but it's gcc-specific. Currently I use MS Visual Express 2008.

> I'm not sure if the version of Boost.Reflection in the Sandbox contains the
> inheritance code. If not, I'll just need to make sure I have unit tests
> together for it and then I'll submit it.

I'm really curious :-)

> Given the normal speed of C++ evolution, I expect to wait quite a while
> before being able to write multi-methods.

Oh but we don't wait: we emulate them. They won't be very fast but for 
my needs it's not very important, as I plan to use them to build graphs 
of objects that mirrors the graph of reflection objects - then put the 
real functionality in the new graph as regular methods.

Now there's a problem. I have been asked via private email to show my 
code. I have commit access to the sandbox. I see that there is no 
reflection directory at the top level yet, instead you use 
boost/reflection and libs/reflection. However I assume that you want to 
reorganize your library to follow the suggested layout?  And thus use 
boost/reflection? What's the normal way of solving this problem?

We have a bit of luck though: you use namespace boost::reflections - and 
I use boost::reflection sans s.

Jean-Louis