boost::operators automatically defines operators like + based on manual implementations like += which is very useful. To generate those operators for T, one inherits from boost::operators<T> as shown by the boost example:

class MyInt : boost::operators<MyInt>

I am familiar with the CRTP pattern, but I fail to see how it works here. Specifically, I am not really inheriting any facilities since the operators aren't members. boost::operators seems to be completely empty, but I'm not very good at reading boost source code.

Could anyone explain how this works in detail? Is this mechanism well-known and widely used?