🚀 go-pugleaf

Andrew Eiler wrote:
> 
> Or include the cc file at the bottom header file. The only issue you run into

Although even Stroustrup uses this as example, 
this is very bad practice indeed and one must be surprised
to see that as a possible solution in Stroustrup's book
at all. Including the source file is no different from writing code into
the header but exposes implementation details of other code.

As noted in another message, instantiating the template in the .cc
file template basic_class < int > et c. allows the implementation to
reside in cc.

The .h file can then provide a typedef basic_class<int> int_class for
it's users.

The advantage of that is that each member function of the template
class gets actually compile for the type provided, which it would
not unless instatiated and used somewhere else in the code. That
reduces development time. The disadvantage is of course that adding
new types requires modification of that source file; but that might
be a minor problem unless you're writing a new template library.

Eventually, the compiler should (will? might?) support the export
keyword which allows the template function implementation to be
kept in the .cc file but made available to other compilation units
as template (uninstatiated).

Regards

Arthur





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