Re: [Ctool-develop] little fixes

[Steven S. <ste...@cs...>]

Shaun Flisakowski wrote:
> It sounds to me like we're basically in agreement here.  My plan going 
> forward is to, for example, take the time to add accessors to all 
> classes I work on, without making the members private.  So, the old API 
> continues to work while a better one is available.

I'm not convinced that accessors gain us much. For example, I'm not sure
that the Statement class should include a next pointer at all. I think
that a Statement should be just a single statement and that there should
be a StatementList class. That sort of change will break the API in a
manner that can't be fixed by accessor functions (or would leave a
permanent wart on the side of the code).

The more I think about this, the more I think we should just design an
API from scratch and intially offer that as a second clean interface.

This is an improvement over making minor changes to the existing API as
it would get rid of all the intermediate stages where we had APIs that
were neither the new or the old API. We could make a little playpen
where we're free to add and remove parameters, functions or even
entire classes wholesale without annoying anyone. We can also do minor
bits of tidying up which make the new API neater but would be
completely unjustified if backward compatability needed to be
maintained. For example, spelling could be made consistent (InclStemnt
could become IncludeStatement).

When we finish playing and have a design we're happy with, we can then
worry about migrating users.

I think we should think about this some more before making any
changes. We can let the design go through several iterations before
we even think about coding it (or coding any more than example
framgents).

I have some ideas I need to think through. I suspect I'll reject a
lot of them.

> Yes, I've been a bit short on time and the necessary motivation lately 
> to do cleanup like this.  I was also having some difficultly with the 
> early (Mac) versions of gcc 3.0 that led me to spend more time on my 
> Metreowerks-using projects. :^)

I know the feeling. When things work, there isn't a real incentive to
tidy them. There are always more important projects to work on (like
the work I'm being paid for).

> I think the next thing needing doing has to be improved handling of gcc 
> extensions, which is what I was working on during my last major ctool 
> development push.  Not being able to cleanly use standard include files 
> is quite the bummer.

Agreed. This is more important. Also, this work is independent of
the API changes.

	- Steven
-- 



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