Physical Design

One of the most important but underrated aspects of a large C++ project is its physical design. The logical design could be the most beautiful thing in the world, yet the physical design can still slow your builds down and generate confusion in a project. You could for instance “modularise” a project by separating it into several DLL’s but still have it heavily coupled due to poorly defined and implemented interfaces.

More often a poor physical design reflects a poor logical design.

What is the physical design?

The physical design consists of all the physical aspects of the project

• The physical files and directories of the project.
• How they are divided into modules or libraries.
• The dependencies between the files and modules.

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