From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Andrew Cagney To: Richard Henderson Cc: Alan Modra , binutils@sources.redhat.com, gdb-patches@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: bfd_read and bfd_write Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2001 17:26:00 -0000 Message-id: <3B96C2B2.8050409@cygnus.com> References: <20010905145037.K13524@bubble.sa.bigpond.net.au> <3B965696.70401@cygnus.com> <20010905122109.A17937@redhat.com> X-SW-Source: 2001-09/msg00052.html > On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 12:45:10PM -0400, Andrew Cagney wrote: > >> rather than change the function signature, why not introduce a new >> interface and then deprecate the old one? > > > Because then you'll never get rid of the old interface. why not introduce the new _external_ interface, go around eliminating all known uses of the old. once done (new release made?) zap the old interface. a common pratice is to add code to the old interface to issue a warning the first time it is called. alan's basic problem of needing to co-ordinate everything so it can all happen at once just goes away. it also covers the k&r problem - you cant rely on a k&r compiler to report parameter mismatches. andrew