Re: Don't use G_STRLOC

[Tim Janik <timj gtk org>]

On Mon, 21 Jan 2002, Owen Taylor wrote:

> Unfortunately, with GCC 3.0 or greater, G_STRLOC is going to have
> to be only FILE:LINE -- the behavior of __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ is
> changing in 3.2 and even current versions spew lots of warnings
> about concetenating use of __PRETTY_FUNCTION__.
> 
> (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69097 has some details)
> 
> We can conditionalize the use of __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ on GCC version,
> but soon enough the situation will be:
> 
>  G_STRLOC will give FILE:LINE on non GCC systems
>  G_STRLOC will give FILE:LINE on current GCC systems
>  G_STRLOC will give FILE:LINE:FUNCTION on old GCC systems
> 
> In view of this, I'd suggest that people don't use G_STRLOC,
> and change:
> 
>  g_warning (G_STRLOC "you can't do that!")
> 
> to:
> 
>  g_warning ("myfunc(): you can't do that!")
> 
> or:
> 
>  g_warning ("%s:%d:myfunc(): you can't do that!", __FILE__, __LINE__)
> 
> If you feel the file/line is important. 

eek, this renders G_STRLOC pretty unusable, the reason to use it in the first
place is the bad maintainability of g_warning ("myfunc(): you can't do that!");
since myfunc() often enough gets renamed or moved without the warning being
adopted.
the alternative, something like:
#define G_LOCFMT  "%s:%s:%s"
#define	G_LOCARG  __FILE__, __LINE__, __func__
g_warning (G_LOCFMT ": don't call me", G_LOCARG);
is way more bug prone and actually quite hackish.
i don't consider G_STRLOC being most usable on gcc systems such a big problem
though, since the majority of glib users actually develops on gcc systems and
this macro is a huge help there to improve warning readability.

so i think it'd be worth at least pointing out the issue to the gcc
team.

> 
> Regards,
>                                         Owen

---
ciaoTJ