On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 11:30 PM, Dave Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com> wrote:
We already have an approach; it requires integration with the test system. Yes, it's imperfect, but it does do the kind of testing needed to see that MyComponent<int> is prohibited.
I wouldn't advocate the technique for testing that a static assertion fails; what you're proposing in this thread is much better suited to that use case.
Excellent! Now I suppose I need to justify my implementation choices, as well as demonstrate how the technique can be used through better examples. I hope that once this technique is digested, the community will discover surprising new ways to make use of it. However, if you need to prove that something fails compilation (an
altogether different problem), you can do it by having the testing system invert the result of running the compiler. For robustness you should also make sure that everything compiles successfully if you disable the specific trigger for the failure, and maybe check the error messages.
Agreed, I have not added this capability to my current GNU Make build system, but I certainly will. Thanks to everybody who explained this approach to proving compilation failures. Thank you, Ben Robinson, Ph.D. --
Dave Abrahams BoostPro Computing http://www.boostpro.com
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