Intional use of name hiding for static function inheritance

Question

I have a base class Base and a number of sub classes BaseDerivate1 .. BaseDerivateN. Part of my code is generic and supports any of the sub classes by accessing the used class via a define BASE_DERIVATE.

I now need to add a static function that the child classes can declare but don't have to. For derived classes that declare StaticFunc(), I want to call it. In all other cases, I want to call the fallback function Base::StaticFunc(). The call looks like this:

#define BASE_DERIVATE BaseDerivate1 // or some other child class

// somewhere else:
BASE_DERIVATE::StaticFunc();

So I intentionally use name hiding here. The StaticFunc is never called from within the class. The question I have is: Is this supported by the C++ standard or would this lead to compiler errors for some compilers. Also: Is there a better way to do "static inheritance"? I am stuck with the define BASE_DERIVATE concept however.

Answer 1

This will "just work":

#include <iostream>

class Base { 
    public: static void foo() { std::cout << "Base::foo()\n"; }
};

class Derived1 : public Base { };
class Derived2 : public Base { 
    public: static void foo() { std::cout << "Derived2::foo()\n"; }
};

int main() {
    Derived1::foo(); // prints "Base::foo()"
    Derived2::foo(); // prints "Derived2::foo()"
}

It's the use of regular name shadowing, which works just the same for static members. The Base static implemenation is still available from Derived2 by means of rather funny syntax:

Derived2::Base::foo();