MSVC 2017 violating static initialization order within single translation unit

Question

MSVC 2017 Community with -std=c++17 chokes on the following example:

#include 

struct TC
{
    static TC const values[];
    static         


        

Answer 1

I isolate the same problem to this simpler example:

#include 

int values[3];
constexpr int& v{ values[1] };

int main()
{
    std::cout << &v << ", " << &values[1] << "\n";
    return 0;
}

which, using latest MSVC 2017 Community, gives output of:

0119D035, 0119D038

The problem does not happen if constexpr is removed.

So I think this is a compiler bug with constexpr reference initialization. The reference was initialized to &values[0] + 1 byte, not &values[1] as it should be.

NB. If anyone is not familiar with constexpr reference definitions, see here or here. constexpr enforces that the initializer is an object with static storage duration.