CGAL users discussion list

["Laurent Rineau (GeometryFactory)" <>]

On Tuesday 30 March 2010 11:30:43 Louis Lavery wrote:
> Neither can I, but that's not what I'm suggesting.
> 
> All I mean is that you can do that same as you do for non-template code.
> You put the declaration in a header (so as users can see that) and the
> definition in a .cpp (as the users don't really want/need to see that).
> 
> Of course, you need to #include the .cpp in the header (I think it's
> natural to do that at the foot of the header) and put a #include guard
> in the .cpp (to avoid recursion).
> 
> I find it a lot easier to work this way, both as an author and as a
> user of a library.
> 
> I know some others also use this style (sorry, haven't a ref to hand)
> and it works just fine. As I say, it reduces clutter in the header,
> and that's important to me for my users.

OK.

Some CGAL classes are wrote like that. Unfortunately, Visual C++ has a bug: 
it 
cannot handle definitions of member templates functions outside of the scope 
of the class definition. See for example <CGAL/Triangulation_2.h>: you can 
see 
that most member functions are defined outside of the class, but member 
templates.

-- 
Laurent Rineau, PhD
R&D Engineer at GeometryFactory           http://www.geometryfactory.com/
Release Manager of the CGAL Project       http://www.cgal.org/