Can anybody please explain to me what this dreaded __missing_type__ is actually good for?
The compiler inserts this sort of place holder if it could not load a depending type libary before, that implements that type and issues error C4772.
When compiling these generated .tli headers afterwards, the compiler of course bails out with tons of consecutive error messages.
I have never encountered a single scenario where it makes sense to use these .tli files. What makes things worse is that Visual Studio leaves these files lying around when I do a clean rebuild. So I always have to manually delete these files if I run into problems.
Can anybody outline a situation where using a type library with missing types may produce something useful?
At some point, the description of C4772 on MSDN is actually funny:
The title says: "Compiler Warning (level 1) C4772" and then further down: "This warning is, by default, issued as an error. C4772 can not be suppressed with /W0."
ROTFL! Here's your cat! But no, your cat is actually a dog and you can't make it stop barking.
Why does Microsoft say C4772 is a warning when it's actually an error?
BTW.: Before posting, I searched technet for "__missing_type__", but since the search separates the words and counted all posts containing either 'missing' or 'type', I got 807000 hits. I didn't fell like scanning all of them....