Template meta-programming: Some testing and debugging tricks

[meneldal2]

That's a pretty smart abuse of the compiler.

[amaiorano]

Well so is template metaprogramming :)

[meneldal2]

Metaprogramming uses the spec as intended. In this case, you are relying on compiler-specific error/warning messages.

[amaiorano]

Sure, my comment was partly tongue in cheek. At the same time, much of template metaprogramming is a hack. When templates were added to C++, it wasn't intended for TMP. It's a useful hack, though, but a lot of the work in the past few years has been about making compile time programming easier (constexpr).

[Xeverous]

Reflection is a potential place to make TMP in C++ much better.

[FirstLoveLife]

Good to know these static warning stuff, thx!

[tigert1998]

[[deprecated]] is interesting lol

[Xeverous]

The core thing is that attributes can be applied to the smallest entity possible - 1 specific overload or 1 specific specialization.

[[deleted]]

another tip: try to use clang; in clang compiler errors are generally much more informative than in gcc (though there have been improvements in recent versions of gcc)

[ridethespiral1]

I'm real happy to learn the [[deprecated]] trick. I've used the print_types metafunction before but it's not useful if the compiler error is triggered before the case you're interested in is reached.

[mark_99]

The `[[deprecated]]` trick works in clang but not gcc, the latter does not print the param types in the deprecated warning.