For this year's hackathon I played around with C++26 reflections, getting to know the new language and library features by making use of them for QRangeModel.

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A Qt engineer explores C++26 reflection and annotations during a company hackathon, implementing support for plain C++ classes in QRangeModel without requiring moc-generated code. The implementation uses the new reflection operator (^^), splice operator ([::]), and structured binding packs to automatically expose class members as model columns and roles. Two approaches are demonstrated: one for simple aggregates using compile-time reflection to access data members, and another for encapsulated classes using property annotations to identify getters/setters. The work required building Qt with gcc trunk (which recently merged reflection support) and specializing internal QRangeModel templates. The result enables Qt Quick item views to work with plain C++ types annotated with property metadata, potentially paving the way for reducing moc dependency in future Qt versions.

C++26 Reflection 💚 QRangeModel