In fact, starting with C++11, you can do this in your projects. Make a common header file with contents like this:

    extern template class std::basic_string<char>;
    extern template class std::vector<int>;
    // etc...

and a corresponding .cc file like this:

    template class std::basic_string<char>;
    template class std::vector<int>;
    // etc...

The template instantiations you list will be compiled in that .cc's object file. Anyone who includes the header will assume those templates were instantiated elsewhere. Net effect is the listed templates are only compiled once.

(Of course this doesn't alleviate the problem of parsing the template header files over and over.)

See the section on explicit instantiation here: http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/class_template