I get by without modules or header files in my C++ projects by using the following guidelines:
- Single translation unit (main.cpp)
- Include all other cpp files in main
- Include files in dependency order (no forward declarations)
- No circular dependencies between files
- Each file has its own namespace (e.g. namespace draw in draw.cpp)
This works well for small to medium sized projects (on the order of 10k lines). I suspect it will scale to 100k-1M line projects as long as there is minimal use of features that kill compile times (e.g. templates).
- Single translation unit (main.cpp)
- Include all other cpp files in main
- Include files in dependency order (no forward declarations)
- No circular dependencies between files
- Each file has its own namespace (e.g. namespace draw in draw.cpp)
This works well for small to medium sized projects (on the order of 10k lines). I suspect it will scale to 100k-1M line projects as long as there is minimal use of features that kill compile times (e.g. templates).