Abstracting the template instantiation relation in C++

Abstract

A source code model that supports the static analysis of C++ templates and template metaprograms is presented. Analogous to techniques for object-oriented and procedural software (e.g., the abstraction of call graphs, inheritance hierarchies, etc.), this model provides a basis for maintenance concerns such as program comprehension, fact extraction, and impact analysis of generic code. The source code model is used to derive the template instantiation graph, and potential applications of this model discussed. An application to reverse engineer this model from source code is described.

Identification of Idiom Usage in C++ Generic Libraries

“…An approach to support the debugging of template metaprograms is given in [18]. A method of recovering type constraints (concepts) from function templates is presented in [24], and a technique to support program analyses of template instantiations is given in [23].…”

“…In order to study the idioms in generic libraries, we extended our srcTools framework [23] to identify the micropatterns described in the previous section. srcTools is a srcML-based [4] fact extraction and source code analysis framework for C++.…”

“…For example, the vector<bool> specialization is encoded as std::vector<bool, $T1-1>. This technique was pioneered in our previous work [23].…”