The use of C++ has cropped up from time to time in the Github comments, and it
really deserves its own thread.
Background: https://github.com/networkupstools/nut/issues/102
From Arnaud:
> @clepple : also a separate discussion, but quickly: c++ is more for devs
than users. Though, by side effect, this will obviously benefit to the user, the
point is to have better code (and coding) for some news components (new drivers
or rewrites) were we could do better with OO. Not a holy grail or golden hammer
though, but just a way to push what we've learned over years.
> on nut-scanner, it's not c++ at all. It was only the first version of
an old idea. But there also, we learned ( hence #14 ). No worries, there will be
some specs soon by @balooloo and me to share and show the intent.
I mistakenly conflated the nut-scanner and nutclient.cpp, but my original
concerns still stand. What can we (either users or developers) gain from
rewriting code in C++?
We already have a few instances of OO code implemented in C, and while I am not
advocating getting rid of them, I don't think it's a model of how things
should be, and simply rewriting them in a different language doesn't fix
things either. Every layer of abstraction makes it harder to locate the exact
piece of code which is logging a specific error. Bear in mind that most of our
debugging is done through log files, not with an actual debugger. Inheritance
(either implicitly in C++, or explicitly with C and function pointers) masks the
actual control flow.
I personally think we have more important things to do than rewriting code in
C++ (in particular, documentation, and considering other UPS access methods like
libusb1, or native HID interfaces). If someone has a use case for how C++ could
help, bear in mind that the benefits of rewriting need to greatly outweigh the
cost in order to make it worthwhile. As long as this is a project maintained on
personal time, I don't see this happening.
If someone wants to propose adding a layer of C++ somewhere, I think they really
need to set the standard by cleaning up the existing C++ code in nutclient.cpp.
The indentation is not consistent, and neither is the spacing between keywords.
(IMHO it should not be necessary to turn on syntax highlighting to browse the
code, handy as it may be.) More importantly, there is at least one warning
related to virtual destructors (see Buildbot logs) that makes me wonder how
closely the memory allocation has been audited. Also, there are hardly any
comments.
This is much more invasive than simply moving files around, and this needs to be
factored into the cost/benefit analysis.
--
Charles Lepple
clepple at gmail
