Comparison of Metaprogramming and Template Programming Solutions for Invariant Maintenance through Implicit Invocation

Abstract

Large software systems commonly contain multiple interdependent components. When independent components change, dependent components must change as well in order to establish system invariants. This scheme leads to a variety of approaches for components to communicate with each other to maintain the invariants. One promising way to do so is to automatically generate implicit invocation code for maintaining the invariant between dependent and independent components. However, since a complex system could have many invariants and performance requirements, the generated code must have a small runtime overhead. This paper explores eight separate approaches for the implementation of implicit invocation invariant maintenance in C++ using compile-time metaprogramming via OpenC++ and generative programming with C++ templates.