Stefan Roiser wrote:
Reflex does provide reflection information for template instances (classes, functions) and template families. An instantiated template class is a Reflex::Type, an instantiated template function is a Reflex::Member. There are two additional classes in the API (TypeTemplate, MemberTemplate) which will allow the user to introspect/interact with a template family (e.g. std::vector<T>), but this information only get's filled once the first template instance in the dictionary source code comes along.
The TypeTemplate/MemberTemplate currently allow to loop over template parameters, look at parameter defaults (if any, this also needs some extra handling - gxxml won't give us this info) and loop over the instances of this template currently available in the system.
I think it is a commendable goal in Reflex to be able to reflect the parameter types for any given template instantiation, since this information may be valuable and usable at run-time. After all, at run-time, information about a template type should be just as accesible regarding finding type information than any other type. One of the pieces of information about a template type is the parameter types which are used to instantiate the template, so run-time reflection should include such information. But I feel that information about the template declaration/definition itself belongs in the realm of a compile-time reflection system, not a run-time reflection system, and can serve no purpose in a run-time reflection system.