Weaving into Template Libraries

[roychous, zhangj, gray] @ cis.uab.edu Aspects have the potential to interact with many different kinds of language constructs in order to modularize crosscutting concerns. Although the initial Java-based aspect languages have demonstrated advantages of applying aspects to traditional object-oriented hierarchies, additional language concepts (e.g., parametric polymorphism) can also benefit from a synergy with aspects. Many popular languages already support parametric polymorphism (e.g., C++ templates), and other languages are soon to adopt the idea. With the acceptance of JSR-14, which brings generics to Java, investigation into the combination of aspects and generics will become more important. This paper presents a program transformation approach for weaving crosscutting concerns into template libraries. The core of the paper demonstrates the approach as applied to a large open-source C++ template library for scientific computing