Support for export keyword to use with C++ templates ?

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Timothy Madden <terminatorul@gmail.com> writes:

> On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 2:24 AM, Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com> wrote:
>> Timothy Madden <terminatorul@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Why is it so hard to store template definitions (and the set of
>>> symbols visible to them) in an
>>> object file, probably as a representation of the parsed template source tree ?
>>
>> I recommend reading "Why We Can't Afford Export."
>
> I have seen that paper in the link, N1426, and I find it to be biased
> against export ...

It may be biased, but I think it does a nice job of explaining why it
is so hard to store template definitions and the set of symbols
visible to them.

g++ is free software.  A clean implementation of export would
certainly be accepted.  All it takes is for somebody to write one.  I
know that seems like a non-answer, but as far as I can tell there is
currently no constituency for adding export to g++.  It's not
something which people routinely complain about.  There are C++
frontend issues which people do routinely complain about, such as bad
error messages and compilation speed, and gcc developers do work on
those areas.

Ian