Harnessing the Power of Build Time Reflection with C++ and Modules in 2023
Are you a C++ programmer eager to leverage reflection functionalities to enhance your productivity and bring your innovative ideas to life? In this talk from the Pure C++ Virtual Conference in June 2023, Gabriel Dos Reis unveils how you can achieve this today, utilizing Modules and the features of contemporary C++.
Gabriel delves into the concept of build time reflection, a powerful tool that allows your program to examine, query, introspect, and manipulate its own state and structures during the build process. He distinguishes between introspection, the ability to query without modifying anything, and reflection, which also involves modifying the program's behavior or generating new code based on the program's state.
Through a simple example involving a struct representing a point in 2D space, Gabriel demonstrates how an attribute can be used to instruct the system to automatically generate an output function for this type. This eliminates the need for manual function writing, reducing boilerplate code and improving efficiency.
Gabriel also explores how this approach can be extended to automate other tasks, such as serializing data for network transmission or saving game state to a file. He emphasizes that these capabilities are available today, without the need to wait for future language features or compiler upgrades.
To conclude, Gabriel encourages viewers to start using Modules today, as they can significantly improve build times and simplify code. He also mentions that the code and resources for his talk are available on GitHub.
The talk concludes with a Q&A session, where Gabriel addresses questions about the potential for static reflection to replace macros, the compatibility of his approach with different compilers, and the potential for the IFC spec to be included in the C++ standard.
To start leveraging these powerful features, download Visual Studio for C++ today: [ Ссылка ]
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