Re: private functions in public api?

On 08/15/2011 10:52 AM, Julian Foad wrote:
> On Sun, 2011-08-14, Neels J Hofmeyr wrote:
>> There are double-underscored function names in include/svn_dirent_uri.h (and
>> in other include/*.h, too), found both on trunk and on 1.7.x, as well as in
>> recent beta releases. Have our naming conventions changed??
>
> Such functions are unsupported even though they appear in a public
> header. Oh, I see in
> <http://subversion.apache.org/docs/community-guide/conventions.html#other-conventions> we say that was the practice 'pre-Subversion 1.5' and not current practice. A few such symbols have been introduced in each (minor) release. The ones you pointed out here are ones I made private in the recent API review. Since they are closely related to other functions that are public, it seemed to make sense to leave them there at the time I made them private, along with being less churn, as I wasn't sure whether they'd survive till 1.7.0 at all (but now they have).
>
> I can move these into a private header if it's helpful. Should I?

I'd personally find it helpful if I were a developer using SVN's API --
because I'd just think I can use all the functions that are there. (Then two
years later I'd read that '__' means 'not long term supported' and then I'd
understand why my code stopped working. -- "gah, why didn't they put it in a
*private* header if it's private!?")

But I don't have a concrete real case, so
+0

~Neels

>
> (As a separate question, does anyone know whether the reasons are 'soft'
> such as tidiness or 'hard'? I seem to recall a discussion in the
> distant past concerning a problem with symbols being exported into DLLs
> and becoming part of the ABI, but I don't recall the exact problem or
> the conclusion.)
>
> - Julian
>
>
>> [[[
>>> svn cat $svnrepos/tags/1.7.0-beta3/subversion/include/svn_dirent_uri.h |
>> grep [a-z]__[a-z]
>> * - @c svn_relpath__internal_style()
>> svn_relpath__internal_style(const char *relpath,
>> svn_uri__is_child(const char *parent_uri,
>> svn_relpath__is_child(const char *parent_relpath,
>> svn_relpath__is_ancestor(const char *parent_relpath,
>> svn_uri__is_ancestor(const char *parent_uri,
>> ]]]
>>
>> ~Neels
>
>