Re: [boost] [OT][RFC] standardized compile-time reflection

Subject: Re: [boost] [OT][RFC] standardized compile-time reflection
From: Matus Chochlik (chochlik_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-04-24 02:59:30

On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 8:31 PM, Roman Perepelitsa
<roman.perepelitsa_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
>> Afterwards I discussed it with several people including
>> Dean Michael Berris, who is the co-author of n3340 "Rich pointers"
>> and is also interested in adding run-time (and static) reflection to C++.
>> We've decided that we merge the ideas from my paper into his
>> proposal (which has not happened yet and will probably take a while).
>
>
> Compile-time reflection may be more inline with the spirit of C++,
> specifically the preference of no-overhead abstractions. Be careful with
> binding your work too closely with runtime reflection -- don't let it sink
> your proposal. This might be even more dangerous given that both proposals
> are quite heavy and will probably take years to mature.
>

The idea (at least for my part) is that the run-time reflection should
be based on the static meta-objects and mostly implemented
as a library on top of them with some additional trickery if necessary
(similar for example to typeid to allow reflection of polymorphic objects).
Maybe Dean can clarify his ideas better, but we have agreed on
the "desired features" as described in 3.1 in the paper and also
on that everything that can be provided at compile-time should
be provided at compile-time (including even strings like identifiers,
keywords, etc. if possible).