Marton Fabo <morton@eik.bme.hu> writes:
This is way too much. I'm not using any so that much advanced stuff that it would be justified - and the compilation time is inacceptable for such a small app.
Just out of curiosity, why is compilation time a big deal? I understand being concerned about the size of the final executable, but how often are you compiling? (and if it's that often, why?).
Sometimes. It's a maturing program with maturing specifications. I, of course, need to make a lot of modifications, and test their effect, not just code blindly. So I have to compile often.
And, just to add to the problem, because of the ever changing expectations, there are a lot of header modifications, which naturally cause recompilation of all the affected units - even slower test cycle.
I'm not sure about that the progress bottleneck really should be code bloat caused by a library - or that it should force me to perform a different programming cycle style. Additionally, that (less frequent compiling and testing) wouldn't fix, just work around the problem at hand.
As we move more and more smarts into compile-time code (template metaprogramming), compilation times naturally go up, especially since C++ templates weren't really designed for the sorts of things we're asking of them. The possibility of Template Metaprogramming is sort of a lucky accident. You can cut the compilation time a bit by using only the "portable" syntax and #including only <boost/function/functionN.hpp> for the appropriate Ns. That will expose less code to the compiler, though I wouldn't expect a dramatic change. The interesting thing about your problem is that Boost.Function is exactly the sort of thing one uses to *eliminate* recompilation dependencies: by hiding the real type of the member/function pointer or function object it wraps behind a single polymorphic type, you can prevent changes to the wrapped type from affecting other code. One thing to keep in mind: Boost.Function can be expensive to copy (both in time and in code space) if you're wrapping stateful function objects. Consider passing it by reference. HTH, -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com