Towards Proling C++ Template Metaprograms?

Abstract. Template metaprogramming (TMP) is an emerging new di-rection in C++ programming for executing algorithms in compilation time. Despite all of its already proven benets, and numerous successful applications, TMP is yet to become an accepted technique in industrial projects. One reason is the lack of professional software tools support-ing the development of template metaprograms. On the other hand, a strong analogue between traditional runtime programs and compile-time metaprograms presents the possibility for creating development tools similar to those already used when writing runtime programs. This pa-per presents two methods for metaprogram proling. Firstly, Templight, a debugging and proling framework is introduced. The framework re-veals the steps executed by the compiler during the compilation of C++ programs with templates. Thus Templight is capable of adding times-tamps to template instantiations, and measuring their times. The second method uses compiler modication acquiring instantiation proling data from the compiler itself.