Re: PATCH: Find more ObjC methods

[David Ayers]

Devang Patel wrote:

> And we are discussing in this
> thread whether we should add new command line option to
> enable 'wrong' compiler warnings. I do not approve such patch.

Why do you insist that the warning is wrong?  (yes the wording was 
misleading but I'm sure there are others.)  You are correct that ObjC 
doesn't have a notion of private methods.  Yet the concept of privat 
methods has been achieved by a common convention in many implemations by 
not declaring them in @interfaces.  This effectively made the 
declarations visible only to the current @implementation context.  If 
the scope was intended to be global to the translation unit, then you 
declared it in an @interface local to the translation unit.

Now you have added a new "feature" that allows the compiler to find and 
use the correct prototype for a method used outside of the intended 
scope .  Fine, or even good! 

But why do you reject the feature of having a method private to the 
current @implementatin scope by the use of a wide spread convention!  I 
know that ObjC doesn't formally support private methods, and I think it 
would be a waste of resources to try to implement something in the 
runtimes.  All we're asking for is to give us back a warning when a 
method is being used outside of the scope it was intended for.  In fact 
we're also offering to do the work.

Cheers,
David