transport type for toml values

[pizzard]

I looked around for a ini file library and found your library recently.
It seems to be exactly what I am looking for.
There is a little problem though. Including toml in all our headers would let our compile times explode, so I am looking for a way to get around that.

My current idea would be, how about if there was a separate header, containing a toml::erased_value type, and this header is absolutely minimal.
The value is defined there and only supports copy, move, and all semantic operations, but no construction besides emtpy default-construction and nothing else.
Ideally this type is not even templated.
In the main header of toml there are explicit conversion functions defined, which allow me to convert a toml::Data or toml::Value into this type and back.

Then I would be able to only include the minimal header for the erased value in my API part, keeping the compile times low.
In the few places where I actually want to parse or read the values, I would then include the full library and then do the conversion and my work.

Is such a container type easy to build? How would one do this?

[ToruNiina]

Yes, compilation time is a problem.

If I understand your point correctly, you want to have something like an <iosfwd> for this library, right?

I experimentally added it to the fwd-header branch, so take a look if you have time.

Also, in the library branch, I'm trying to add an option to build toml11 as a normal (non-header-only) library in order to reduce compilation time. It might help you.