As C++ metaprogramming paradigm grows richer revision after revision, C++ metaprograms get more complex, more powerful, and therefore compile times increase over time. Common knowledge about the impact of metaprogramming mechanisms like SFINAE, concepts, or if constexpr on compile times are now parts of the C++ culture, but actual analysis of their behavior remains few and far between.

Compile time analysis should become as trivial as runtime analysis.

ctbench was made with that purpose in mind and proposes a way of gathering, analysing, and comparing granular compile time data using Clang's time-trace feature. It provides a C++/CMake developer-friendly API to declare parametric compile-time benchmarks and comparisons through flexible plotting backends.