Interoperation

This is the final section of the tutorial, and it is unavoidably quite lengthy as we are going to tie together all of the material covered in the tutorial so far into a single, unified, application of Outcome’s facilities.

One thing which Outcome solves – and which alternatives do not – is how to non-intrusively tie together multiple third party libraries, each using Outcome – or some other T|E implementatation like P0323 std::expected<T, E> – with custom incommensurate E types, or indeed arbitrary return types which are “split” T|E return types. Solving this well is the coup de grâce of Outcome against alternative approaches to this problem domain, including std::expected<T, E>. It is the major reason why you should consider using Outcome over alternatives, including Expected.

Firstly we shall explore some of the problems faced by the software developer when T|E return type based code proliferates at scale, where dozens of libraries may be using completely incompatible T|E return types.

Secondly we shall introduce the ValueOrError concept support in Outcome, which implements a subset of the proposed WG21 ValueOrError concept framework.

Finally, we shall then step through a worked example which mocks up a realistic situation that the software developer may find themselves in: tying together disparate third party libraries, whose source code cannot be modified, into an application-wide, mixed-mode T|E and exception throwing universal error handling system which is capable of accurately representing the original failure, but also propagating it in a way that the application can deal with universally.