"Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For Email)" <SeeWebsiteForEmail@moderncppdesign.com> writes:
This is, unsurprisingly, a major effort, and boost would be a crucible of the size and expertise needed to pull it off.
I think solving the "syntactic metaprogramming problem" really requires familiarity with and access to the source code of a C++ compiler. I don't think we have much of that around here, despite the existence of g++.
The way I see things, there are three ways:
1. Start from the Boost implementation of the C++ preprocessor, and add sane features to it. Keep the old preprocessor features as deprecated.
That one's a possibility. I personally would not want to solve these problems in the preprocessor layer because I want better integration with the rest of the language than that approach can offer. Others may feel differently, of course.
2. Agree on a standard text preprocessing tool (perl, awk, sed, m4...) and write some utilities tailored for C++ tasks.
I've gone down this path, with unsatisfactory results. Not interested in this one.
3. Start an effort to add ways of manipulating ASTs to the native language so as to eliminate the need for preprocessing.
That approach has promise. Bjarne has a project to standardize a C++ program representation and manipulation library -- it could be interesting to build a metaprogramming system around that.
Given, however, the lack of traction that I sense around here, I think this group will be flooded with arguments on why all of 1, 2, and 3 are disadvantageous.
Wow, I guess nobody would want to argue with you on any points for fear of being part of the flood and confirming your "lack of traction." I think until this post of mine showed up, this last sentence had the effect of quashing any further discussion of your three ideas. Instead we have a mostly-irrelevant thread about whether TMP and PPMP are similar. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com