Re: [Cilib-users] Calling cilib from existing code

[Edwin P. <ed...@pe...>]

On Monday 19 May 2008 12:43:55 Gary Pampara wrote:

> David, based on the code you sent in the last email, are you compiling the
> code in C#? I'm not sure if that's possible as I don't know much about
> .net. Also, Java 1.5+ uses covariant return types so we can "overload" the
> return of the getClone() to make the code cleaner.

Sounds like IKVM might not support covariant return types?

> There are several reasons why we decided to add the getClone().
> Incidentally the Clonable interface in CIlib extends java.util.Cloneable.
> I need to check my notes why we didn't directly use the clone() withing
> Java, but one of the reasons that come to mind is that an base Object is
> returned. This caused some issues with a few classes, lemme get the exact
> reason and get back to you. If I remember correctly we had problems with
> some of the Java generics.

I'd be keen to understand those reasons -- the down cast from Object in a 
subclass isn't really that ugly. Well it is ugly, but it's not ugly enough to 
warrant doing things in non-standard ways IMHO. It makes it harder for new 
developers to understand what's going on because they expect it to work in a 
certain way, and in this particular case, the use of covariant returns types 
might just be what's breaking David's code in the IKVM environment.

Regards,
Edwin Peer

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