I've merged several of Your posts so I can reply in one message, lazy me, sorry ;-P
Excellent idea :-) I have renamed my library 'introspection' (to avoid clashing with Jeremy's work) and committed it to the sandbox. Today I wet my feet with Boost.Mirror. Using the doc (and the source code ;-)) I was able to make the code at the bottom of this message work. After a couple of hours 1/ I was very impressed 2/ I had a headache 3/ I was convinced that building runtime reflection on top of your work will be easy and 4/ I had found a bug ;-)
But I was thinking (suprisingly enough) about gcc2xml being used as an optional support for automated registering of things into mirror, on those platforms where it is available.
Sure, we must write the backend in such a way that it is useable stand-alone then write generators. My experience is that generators are fine as long as you have only one of them in a project but two won't coexist well, usually. I'm running out of time, I have to work on serious things, namely preparing my trip to ... Slovakia ! Here's my Mirror hello-world, with the bug report: #include <iostream> #include <boost/mirror/meta_class.hpp> #include <boost/mirror/meta_inheritance.hpp> #include <boost/mirror/algorithm/for_each.hpp> using namespace std; using namespace boost; using namespace boost::mirror; struct animal { int age; }; struct mammal : virtual animal { }; struct carnivore : virtual animal { }; struct dog : mammal, carnivore { }; namespace boost { namespace mirror { BOOST_MIRROR_REG_TYPE_GLOBAL_SCOPE(animal) BOOST_MIRROR_REG_CLASS_ATTRIBS_BEGIN(animal) BOOST_MIRROR_REG_SIMPLE_CLASS_ATTRIB(_, int, age) BOOST_MIRROR_REG_CLASS_ATTRIBS_END BOOST_MIRROR_REG_TYPE_GLOBAL_SCOPE(mammal) BOOST_MIRROR_REG_BASE_CLASSES_BEGIN(mammal) BOOST_MIRROR_REG_VIRTUAL_BASE_CLASS(0, public, animal) BOOST_MIRROR_REG_BASE_CLASSES_END // watch out: BOOST_MIRROR_REG_SINGLE_BASE_CLASS_VIRTUAL(mammal, public, animal) // doesn't work because it calls BOOST_MIRROR_REG_BASE_CLASS_VIRTUAL // instead of BOOST_MIRROR_REG_VIRTUAL_BASE_CLASS BOOST_MIRROR_REG_TYPE_GLOBAL_SCOPE(carnivore) BOOST_MIRROR_REG_BASE_CLASSES_BEGIN(carnivore) BOOST_MIRROR_REG_VIRTUAL_BASE_CLASS(0, public, animal) BOOST_MIRROR_REG_BASE_CLASSES_END BOOST_MIRROR_REG_TYPE_GLOBAL_SCOPE(dog) BOOST_MIRROR_REG_BASE_CLASSES_BEGIN(dog) BOOST_MIRROR_REG_BASE_CLASS(0, public, mammal) BOOST_MIRROR_REG_BASE_CLASS(1, public, carnivore) BOOST_MIRROR_REG_BASE_CLASSES_END } } struct print_attribute { template<typename ATTRIBUTE> void operator()(ATTRIBUTE) { cout << ATTRIBUTE::get_name(mpl::false_(), std::char_traits<char>()) << endl; } }; struct print_base { template<typename CLASS> void display(CLASS, virtual_base_) { cout << "virtual " << CLASS::meta_base_class::get_name(mpl::false_(), std::char_traits<char>()) << endl; } template<typename CLASS> void display(CLASS, nonvirtual_base_) { cout << CLASS::meta_base_class::get_name(mpl::false_(), std::char_traits<char>()) << endl; } template<typename CLASS> void operator()(CLASS c) { display(c, CLASS::inheritance_specifier()); } }; int main() { mirror::for_each< meta_class<animal>::attributes >(print_attribute()); mirror::for_each< meta_class<mammal>::base_classes >(print_base()); mirror::for_each< meta_class<dog>::base_classes >(print_base()); return 0; } Cordially, Jean-Louis