changing private members of public classes

[David Faure]

On Wednesday 21 July 2004 18:43, Leo Savernik wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Normally, adding parameters to a public or protected method of a public class
> is BIC and hence forbidden.
> 
> However, what about adding parameters to a non-virtual private method? 
Should be fine.

> It is certainly BIC, but no one outside of the library was ever supposed to use it,
> so if it breaks, it's their own fault.
They actually can't use it, if they don't resort to the ugly #define :)

> What policy does KDE follow as far as changing private methods of public
> classes are concerned? [1] doesn't meantion that point, that's why I ask.
We do it all the time.

"private" is clear: it means no guarantee of binary compatibility since the caller isn't
even supposed to use it.

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).