[Insight-developers] Returning a smart pointer or a pointer?

[Bill Lorensen]

I agree. If there is no chance of a backward compatibility problem, we
should change the current method and remove the new method.

Bill

On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 2:18 PM, Tom Vercauteren
<tom.vercauteren at m4x.org> wrote:
> Hi Karthik,
>
> If there is no real backward compatibility issue, changing the API
> would definitely be cleaner and less confusing to the user.
>
> I actually didn't realize that the method wasn't virtual.
>
> Tom
>
> On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 7:19 PM, Karthik Krishnan
> <karthik.krishnan at kitware.com> wrote:
>> I think tou might as well rework the implementation of the class by
>> changing the return type to "DeformationFieldType *" from
>> "DeformationFieldTypePointer", instead of adding another
>> implementation and deprecating the old one.
>>
>> Its hard for anyone to be affected by it. The method is not virtual.
>> SmartPointers are implicitly castable to raw pointers.
>>
>> Sure someone can actually override a non-virtual function and get away
>> with most compilers but that's pretty stupid.
>>
>> Chances are by doing so his method won't even be called from the ITK
>> framework even now cause it casts classes to
>> PDEDeformableRegistrationFunction in the framework.
>>
>> Am I mistaken ?
>>
>> Thanks
>> --
>> karthik
>>
>> On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 1:20 PM, Luis Ibanez <luis.ibanez at kitware.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Hauke,
>>>
>>> Yes,
>>> this is what Brad King used to implement the LegacyMacro in VTK,
>>> that we then ported to ITK.
>>>
>>>
>>> The macro is in lines 666-680 of the file
>>>
>>>
>>>             Insight/Code/Common/itkMacro.h
>>>
>>>
>>> # define itkLegacyMacro(method) class itkLegacyMethodRemoved /* no ';' */
>>> #elif defined(ITK_LEGACY_SILENT) || defined(ITK_LEGACY_TEST) ||
>>> defined(CSWIG)
>>>  // Provide legacy methods with no warnings.
>>> # define itkLegacyMacro(method) method
>>> #else
>>>  // Setup compile-time warnings for uses of deprecated methods if
>>>  // possible on this compiler.
>>> # if defined(__GNUC__) && !defined(__INTEL_COMPILER) && (__GNUC__ > 3 ||
>>> (__GNUC__ == 3 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 1))
>>> #  define itkLegacyMacro(method) method __attribute__((deprecated))
>>> # elif defined(_MSC_VER) && _MSC_VER >= 1300
>>> #  define itkLegacyMacro(method) __declspec(deprecated) method
>>> # else
>>> #  define itkLegacyMacro(method) method
>>> # endif
>>> #endif
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The open question is whether we are deprecating the method,
>>> or just alert users/developers that this method carries with
>>> it some performance penalties...
>>>
>>>
>>> I don't know the answer to this question...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>    Luis
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --------------------
>>> Hauke Heibel wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Luis and Tom,
>>>>
>>>> How about deprecated warnings? I have a small sample which worked with gcc
>>>> 3.4.4, VS cl.exe 14.00 and Intel C++ compiler 9.1. I admit that there might
>>>> be problems with other compilers since I am not sure if that declspec
>>>> belongs to the standard. I saw that there also exists a deprecated attribute
>>>> (http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.3.1/gcc/Function-Attributes.html#Function%20Attributes).
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Hauke
>>>>
>>>> Here is the sample:
>>>> ----------------------------
>>>> class Foo
>>>> {
>>>> public:
>>>>  __declspec(deprecated) void GetDeformationFieldRawPointer(){}
>>>> };
>>>>
>>>> int main(int argc, char*argv[])
>>>> {
>>>>  Foo f;
>>>>  f.GetDeformationFieldRawPointer();
>>>>  return 0;
>>>> }
>>>> ----------------------------
>>>>
>>>> Tom Vercauteren wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi Luis,
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for the changes!
>>>>>
>>>>> As far as encouraging people to use the raw pointer function, I don't
>>>>> see a better solution than documenting it as you did.
>>>>>
>>>>> Tom
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Insight-developers mailing list
>>> Insight-developers at itk.org
>>> http://www.itk.org/mailman/listinfo/insight-developers
>>>
>>
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