“Poor Man's Reflection” (AKA bottom-up reflection) in C++

Question

I am implementing some rudimentary reflection in C++ for an ultra modular architecture where virtually all features are loaded as plugins and interpreted dynamically at run-

Answer 1

Just to summarize:

1. there's a lot of existing industry-standard frameworks to implement loadable modules in C++, with different levels of module introspection. Just to name a few: MSWindows COM and variants, CORBA (various implementations), KDE KParts, DBus-enabled services on Linux and other Unix-like OSes etc. In general I would go with one of existing variant depending on target platform and other considerations

2. If you absolutely need to costruct your own bike^W framework, I would separate classes implementing module business-logic from the boilerplate. Certainly this approach introduces another level of indirection and this may cause some performance issues. But if done clever this boilerplate may be quite thin, almost unperceivable. Also separating BL from the framework would allow to completely change the horse w/o much efforts in future. To go with this approach I would choose code manipulating tools like GCC-XML or appropriate CLang modules.

3. Also there're a number of existing C++ libraries from simple to complex to build your own tightly composed framework. Examples: ROOT Reflex, Boost.Reflect

The rest is under your own choice. I know that people of Gnome project, unsatisfied with deficiencies and shortcomings of C++, invented their own OOP framework on plain C (GLib/GObject) and later developed on that basis a new fully functional language similar to C# (Vala). It's all up to you where to stop yourself :)