Re: Sather: templates necessary?

[Norbert Nemec]

I think most of the discussion revolves around this fundamental 
misunderstanding:

I am not talking about the problems of compilation speed or the problem 
of the need to distribute source code or anything like that. It is the 
question about interface any implementation. If you write a library, 
you can put the interface into .h files and the implementation into 
.cpp files. compile the thing, link it into a shared library and 
distribute the library and the .h files for people to use it.

Now, if you only change the internal implementation of the library, the 
.h files stay the same and any program out there will silently work 
with the new library as well, without recompilation.

You will never be able to create a C++ compiler that allows changing 
template implementations without having to recompile any program that 
uses the templates.

Of course it's the same for inline functions, but there it only is a 
question of optimization. For templates, it is a fundamental question.

Ciao,
Nobbi

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