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Computer Science > Software Engineering

arXiv:2506.21654 (cs)
[Submitted on 26 Jun 2025]

Title:Experience converting a large mathematical software package
written in C++ to C++20 modules

Authors:Wolfgang Bangerth
View a PDF of the paper titled Experience converting a large
mathematical software package written in C++ to C++20 modules, by
Wolfgang Bangerth
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    Abstract:Mathematical software has traditionally been built in
    the form of "packages" that build on each other. A substantial
    fraction of these packages is written in C++ and, as a
    consequence, the interface of a package is described in the form
    of header files that downstream packages and applications can
    then #include. C++ has inherited this approach towards exporting
    interfaces from C, but the approach is clunky, unreliable, and
    slow. As a consequence, C++20 has introduced a "module" system in
    which packages explicitly export declarations and code that
    compilers then store in machine-readable form and that downstream
    users can "import" -- a system in line with what many other
    programming languages have used for decades.
    Herein, I explore how one can convert large mathematical software
    packages written in C++ to this system, using the this http URL
    finite element library with its around 800,000 lines of code as
    an example. I describe an approach that allows providing both
    header-based and module-based interfaces from the same code base,
    discuss the challenges one encounters, and how modules actually
    work in practice in a variety of technical and human metrics. The
    results show that with a non-trivial, but also not prohibitive
    effort, the conversion to modules is possible, resulting in a
    reduction in compile time for the converted library itself; on
    the other hand, for downstream projects, compile times show no
    clear trend. I end with thoughts about long-term strategies for
    converting the entire ecosystem of mathematical software over the
    coming years or decades.

Subjects: Software Engineering (cs.SE); Mathematical Software (cs.MS)
Cite as:  arXiv:2506.21654 [cs.SE]
          (or arXiv:2506.21654v1 [cs.SE] for this version)
          https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.21654
          Focus to learn more
          arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Wolfgang Bangerth [view email]
[v1] Thu, 26 Jun 2025 17:38:33 UTC (164 KB)
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    Wolfgang Bangerth
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