Comments on: Is this a safe pattern for auto-registration?

By: philhassey

philhassey — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:47:24 +0000

@dukope good call. Explicit is always better than implicit.

@Danyal the first approach actually added stuff to a vector prior to main() being called by using static / global variables.

By: Danyal

Danyal — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 05:22:47 +0000

Don’t the two approaches do the same thing? I don’t see what was automatic about the first approach. But then, I am a bit slow.

By: dukope

dukope — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 05:19:48 +0000

Actually, one change I’d suggest is this:

#define DOINIT(v) void v(Game &g);v(g);

void game_init(Game &g) {
DOINIT(levplay_init);
DOINIT(levedit_init);
}

… So when you search the code for levplay_init, it has two hits: the function itself and the call from game_init. Otherwise at some point in the future (speaking from experience here), you’ll spend a few moments confused about why your levedit_init function isn’t referenced from anywhere and it’ll take a callstack to figure it out.

By: dukope

dukope — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 05:12:12 +0000

That would be my suggestion as well. Way easier to manage an explicit list of system inits in one place. Both for dependencies and code clarity, I think your second solution is much better.

By: philhassey

philhassey — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:11:23 +0000

After a bit of thought, this all seems like a misguided idea.

This seems much safer and more predictable. It’s not “automagic” but it requires less keystrokes to attain the same effect. So that’s more of a win in my book.

#define DOINIT(v) void v##_init(Game &g);v##_init(g);

void game_init(Game &g) {
DOINIT(levplay);
DOINIT(levedit);
}

By: Mykhailo

Mykhailo — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:10:43 +0000

I think it should work just fine. As another approach for auto registration I saw, it was usage of intrusive list and adding current object to the list in constructor.