There's a C++ problem I keep running into, in a very large body of software
with lots of subclassing.
There's a base class that defines a set of interface methods, not all pure
virtual (some define the default behavior). A number of subclasses override
some but not all of these.
Now I find myself changing the argument list of some of these methods, so I
have to change the base class definitions and also track down all the subclass
redefinitions. If I miss one of the latter, that subclass method is no longer
called (it now just looks like an unrelated method with a different argument
list that isn't used anywhere). Finding these things can be hard and time
consuming.
It would be helpful to have some way to mark a method as "this is supposed to
be an override of a base class method", in other words "warn me if this method
doesn't override some method in a base class".
Does that sound like a possible thing to do, perhaps with some __attribute__
magic? Would it be interesting?
paul
