Re: Fighting vs NSClassDescription

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On Monday, September 23, 2002, at 11:10 AM, David Wetzel wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> I have a framework that
>
> has methods like attributeKeys etc. But after re-installing GS-Base the 
> runtime calls the methods from NSClassDescriptionPrimitives.
>
> Is there an other way than changing my Class to override this methods?
> I have them in a category in my DataBase-framework...
>
> On Apple with EOF this works too without overriding the stuff from 
> NSClassDescriptionPrimitives. Do they some special magic there?

The attributeKeys method is documented as being in a category of 
NSObject in MacOS-X (as it is in GNUstep).
Where two categories of a class contain the same method, the choice of 
which method is used is officially
undefined.

In theory, that means that the fact that it works for you on MacOS-X is 
just luck, and you may find
it ceases to work for you in another version of the system (or even if 
you change the number or order
of libraries/frameworks you link with).

I think the safest way of doing things where categories are involved, is 
to override the methods in
a class of your own.