Here is the central data structure design with Node<T> shown:
The big issue I’m facing is with Node<T> and Edge<T>. Note that the Edge class doesn’t know what Node is:
Edge:
private: T* sourceNode_m; T* targetNode_m;
Where as Node:
private: std::vector<std::unique_ptr<Edge<T>>> outEdges_m; std::vector<Edge<T>*> inEdges_m;
It works ok until you want to extend Edges functionality. E.g. Residue_linkage was created before we had an Edge class, and is acting like an Edge. Ideally it would extend the Edge class and so we could do things like:
residue1->AddConnection(residue2);
and it would create an Edge, which also had all the Residue Linkage functionality (e.g. changing dihedrals).
But I can’t do this. Residue is a Node<Residue> and it has Edge<Residue>. I can change ResidueLinkage to extend the Edge class like this:
class ResidueLinkage : public glygraph::Edge<Residue>
But that doesn’t do anything for me. Residue has no relationship with this class. I thought about multiple template types so Node could be Node<T,E> and you give the Edge type explicitly. So Residue could be:
class Residue : public glygraph::Node<Residue,ResidueLinkage???> ...
what? I can’t figure out how this relationship would work. I need Node then not to have Edges, but ResidueLinkages. So the current design doesn’t allow this.