This is originally from Sara's blog.
It also works with almost any version of Visual Studio, you just need to change the "8.0" in the registry key to the appropriate version number for your version of Visual Studio.
The guide line shows up in the Output window too. (Visual Studio 2010 corrects this, and the line only shows up in the code editor window.)
You can also have the guide in multiple columns by listing more than one number after the color specifier:
RGB(230,230,230), 4, 80
Puts a white line at column 4 and column 80. This should be the value of a string value Guides
in "Text Editor" key (see bellow).
Be sure to pick a line color that will be visisble on your background. This color won't show up on the default background color in VS. This is the value for a light grey: RGB(221, 221, 221).
Here are the registry keys that I know of:
Visual Studio 2010: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Text Editor
Visual Studio 2008: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Text Editor
Visual Studio 2005: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Text Editor
Visual Studio 2003: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1\Text Editor
For those running Visual Studio 2010, you may want to install the following extensions rather than changing the registry yourself:
These are also part of the Productivity Power Tools, which includes many other very useful extensions.
Caveat: It is not necessary to put the implementation in the header file, see the alternative solution at the end of this answer.
Anyway, the reason your code is failing is that, when instantiating a template, the compiler creates a new class with the given template argument. For example:
template<typename T>
struct Foo
{
T bar;
void doSomething(T param) {/* do stuff using T */}
};
// somewhere in a .cpp
Foo<int> f;
When reading this line, the compiler will create a new class (let's call it FooInt
), which is equivalent to the following:
struct FooInt
{
int bar;
void doSomething(int param) {/* do stuff using int */}
}
Consequently, the compiler needs to have access to the implementation of the methods, to instantiate them with the template argument (in this case int
). If these implementations were not in the header, they wouldn't be accessible, and therefore the compiler wouldn't be able to instantiate the template.
A common solution to this is to write the template declaration in a header file, then implement the class in an implementation file (for example .tpp), and include this implementation file at the end of the header.
Foo.h
template <typename T>
struct Foo
{
void doSomething(T param);
};
#include "Foo.tpp"
Foo.tpp
template <typename T>
void Foo<T>::doSomething(T param)
{
//implementation
}
This way, implementation is still separated from declaration, but is accessible to the compiler.
Alternative solution
Another solution is to keep the implementation separated, and explicitly instantiate all the template instances you'll need:
Foo.h
// no implementation
template <typename T> struct Foo { ... };
Foo.cpp
// implementation of Foo's methods
// explicit instantiations
template class Foo<int>;
template class Foo<float>;
// You will only be able to use Foo with int or float
If my explanation isn't clear enough, you can have a look at the C++ Super-FAQ on this subject.
Best Answer
The syntax and semantics of C++ make it incredibly difficult to correctly implement refactoring functionality. It's possible to implement something relatively simple to cover 90% of the cases, but in the remaining 10% of cases that simple solution will horribly break your code by changing things you never wanted to change.
Read http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/defective.html#defect-8 for a brief discussion of the difficulties that any refactoring code in C++ has to deal with.
Microsoft has evidently decided to punt on this particular feature for C++, leaving it up to third-party developers to do what they can.