Speaker
S. Roiser
(CERN)
Description
The C++ programming language has very limited capabilities for
reflection information about its objects. In this paper a new reflection
system will be presented, which allows complete introspection of C++
objects and has been developed in the context of the CERN/LCG/SEAL
project in collaboration with the ROOT project.
The reflection system consists of two different parts. The first part is
a code generator that produces automatically reflection information from
existing C++ classes. This generation of the reflection information is
done in a non intrusive way, which means that the original C++ classes
definition do not need to be changed or instrumented. The second part of
the reflection system is able to load/build this information in memory
and provides an API to the user.
The user can query reflection information from any C++ class and also
interact generically with the objects, like invocation of functions,
setting and getting data members or constructing and deleting objects.
When designing the different packages it was taken care of having
minimal dependencies on external software and a possibility to port the
software to different platforms/compilers.
A quick overview of the current implementation in use by the LCG SEAL
and POOL projects will be given. A more detailed description of the new
model, which aims to reflect the complete C++ language and to be a
common reflection system used also by the ROOT framework, will be given.
