Is it currently possible to get more meaningful error messages from C++ template code?

Question

As in the title.

Answer 1

see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/563414/how-do-you-debug-heavily-templated-code-in-c

Answer 2

look on STLFilt http://www.bdsoft.com/tools/stlfilt.html

Answer 3

yes.

It may help if you provide a bit more detail.

Answer 4

With existing template classes / libraries, unlikely. I assume you mean that you've somehow violated the parameter requirements, function signatures or whatever in such a way as to cause the compiler to attempt to instantiate a template incorrectly, and spew out a subsequent alphabet soup of errors based on the attempted instantiation.

In the long run, C++0X will be implementing something called Concepts, which will give the compiler more information about the parameters, type requirements and the like, which should make compiler error messages at least somewhat less painful.

In the short run, for template classes / libraries which you control, you can explore making things better using the Boost Concept Check Library.