Ingo Weinhold wrote:
On 2008-05-21 at 17:43:38 [+0200], kaoutsis <kaoutsis@xxxxxx> wrote:Ingo Weinhold wrote:On 2008-05-21 at 01:05:51 [+0200], kaoutsis <kaoutsis@xxxxxx> wrote:The main problem is not binary compatibility. The problem is that the Be APIIngo Weinhold wrote:wrote:Anyway, it certainly doesn't harm to try, but I have little hope that thiswill have any effect. If the standard maintainers consider the request, they are in a dilemma. Undoing the Issue 6 error codes change means that all the applications that relied on it would become non-conforming.I agree. I had an idea how to tackle the problem, may be good, may be bad:requires that error codes be negative. E.g. create_sem() returns a non-negative value (the sem_id) when successful, a negative error codeotherwise. A good deal of other functions/methods use the same strategy, and so does third party code. Making our error codes positive will break them all.Changing concerned API functions to return -1 and set errno would be anoption, but that would be quite a bit of work and third party software wouldhave to be changed as well. Personally I don't even find this option very appealing.Also, i didn't find this idea very appealing and that was the 'easy part'; i forgot the 'hard part' :-), just for the record here it is: all the functions that returns semIds, areaIds etc, they would check for errors like this: area_id areaSpaceId; areaSpaceId = create_area("AreaSpace",... if (areaSpaceId < B_OK) { problems: a) In all similar current code places, the 0 should be replaced with B_OK b) There must be an assurance that the valid ids should not conflict with the error codes.If you really define B_OK to LONG_MAX, the number of valid IDs is *very* limited. :-)
It looks like, in my mind, above the LONG_MAX, there is another set to use of VERY_LONG_MAX :-D
Even, if you pick a smaller number, a non-null B_OK doesn't sound like that good an idea. The "no error" error code has traditionally been 0. By changing that all code relying on it will break -- the checks you mentioned above, but also the "status_t error = ...; if (error) {...}" kinds of checks, and we would need to translate the error codes for the newer POSIX APIs that directly return an error code.
Now i understood the full moto : "_We_ making standards work, but the nightmare is _yours_" :-D good bye, Vasilis