Re: NYIException

[Andrew Haley]

Dalibor Topic writes:
 > Jeroen Frijters wrote:
 > > Andrew Haley wrote:
 > > 
 > >>Out of interest (and please forgive me if this has already been
 > >>discussed at length) why have dummy methods at all?  Wouldn't it be
 > >>better to have a compile time failure for unimplemented methods?
 > > 
 > > 
 > > I think so, but sometimes (e.g. when implementing interfaces or
 > > extending abstract classes), you're required to provide the methods, but
 > > I agree that not having the unimplemented method is the cleanest
 > > solution.
 > 
 > On the other hand, you can start writing the docs & 'prototypes'
 > for a class without having to fully implement everything. Depends
 > on the point of view, I guess.
 > 
 > And of course, there is the 'you can at least compile it using
 > classpath, even if you can't run it' aspect, that plays a big role
 > for debian and similar 'free software buildable by free tools'
 > efforts, afaik.

I see.  While this is okay for the Classpath development process, I
don't think it's best for gcj.  We've already had some confusion where
users compile code with gcj and it fails to run.

Throwing an appropriate message will help, of course, but one of the
advantages of gcj is that you can pre-link and you know you won't get
runtime linkage errors -- the linker has resolved everything.  Having
dummy implementations loses this gcj advantage.

Andrew.