templating virtual functions not possible. Only a temporary technical limitation?

Question

I understand that you can't declare a virtual method as templated, because the compiler would not know how much entries to reserve in the virtual table. This is, however, a technical limitation, rather than a language one. The compiler could know how many instances of the template are actually needed, and "go back" to allocate a proper vtable size.

Is there a planned technical solution in the upcoming standard?

Answer 1

The compiler can never know all of the possible instantiations of a template. Under the current compilation model, each translation unit is compiled separately and later linked. When compiling a template type in one translation unit, you do not know the instantiations of that type in another.

Imagine you're writing a library and you want a template function in it. You compile the library and then distribute it to your clients. Now the clients can instantiate your template function with whatever template arguments they like, but your library has already been compiled! It can't "go back" and change this.

You're assuming that when you compile the template function, you also have available every instantiation of that function. That's often not the case and, under the current compilation and linking model, cannot be known to be the case.