Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!pcg
From: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: information hiding
Summary: Import and export... Compiled headers!
Message-ID: <1042@aber-cs.UUCP>
Date: 30 Jun 89 13:05:37 GMT
Reply-To: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Organization: Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth
	(Disclaimer: my statements are purely personal)
Lines: 24

In article <2465@etive.ed.ac.uk> db@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Dave Berry) writes:
    In article <7709@spool.cs.wisc.edu> solomon@gjetost.cs.wisc.edu (Marvin Solomon) writes:
    > [An explanation of why class definitions must include private members,
    >  so that the compiler knows the size of the class.]
    
    This doesn't explain why private function members must be included.
    It's a real pain to have to recompile a large part of a program just
    because you've added a private function to do some internal processing.

	[ ... ]
    
    Other approaches to this would be to use a separate header file to store
    the private member functions, and to write your makefile so that only the
    relevant .c file was recompiled when the private .h file was changed.

Let me insist that an import/export facility with compiled headers would
be the ideal solution... And it is fairly easy to implement. And one could
still use #include for backwards compatibility. And ...

(whining again on this subject :->)
-- 
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi           | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk