Understanding the Compilation Error in Implementing make_integer_sequence

In the given code, the implementation of make_helper uses a recursive template metaprogramming approach. However, when the GEN macro is changed to generate sequences of larger sizes, the compilation fails with a "virtual memory exhausted" error. This error occurs because excessive template instantiation and recursion can consume a significant amount of system resources, resulting in virtual memory exhaustion.

The error can be attributed to the following factors:

• Deep Template Instantiation: Each instantiation of make_helper recursively generates multiple instances of itself, leading to an exponential increase in the number of instantiations.
• Large Sequence Generation: Attempting to create sequences with large sizes, such as make_integer_sequence, further exacerbates the resource consumption issue.

Reducing Template Deep Instantiation

To address the compilation issue, it is crucial to reduce the depth of template instantiation. One approach is to use a log N implementation, which eliminates the recursive nature of the original implementation.

The provided log N implementation achieves this by utilizing the seq and concat structs. The seq struct serves as a template metafunction that constructs sequences of unsigned integers. The concat struct is used to generate sequences by concatenating two smaller sequences.

The gen_seq struct employs a recursive, divide-and-conquer approach to generate sequences. It divides the desired sequence size by two recursively, concatenating the resulting sequences to obtain the final sequence. The base cases are defined for generating sequences of sizes 0 and 1.

Overall, this log N implementation avoids excessive template instantiation and recursion, making it more efficient and less resource-intensive even for large sequence sizes.