An earlier version of this concept checking system was developed by
the author while working at SGI in their C++ compiler and library
group. The earlier version is now part of the SGI STL distribution. The
boost concept checking library differs from the concept checking in
the SGI STL in that the definition of concept checking classes has
been greatly simplified, at the price of less helpful verbiage in the
error messages.
The idea to use function pointers to cause instantiation is due to
Alexander Stepanov. I am not sure of the origin of the idea to use
expressions to do up-front checking of templates, but it did appear in
D&E[
2].
Thanks to Matt Austern for his excellent documentation and
organization of the STL concepts, upon which these concept checks
are based. Thanks to Boost members for helpful comments and
reviews.