[Aptitude-devel] aptitude-qt VCS usage and code review

[Sune Vuorela]

On 2010-07-08, Daniel Burrows <dburrows at algebraicthunk.net> wrote:
>     - aptitude generally uses get_foo or getFoo() for accessors, not
>       foo().

Most Qt coding docs recommends real hard to use foo(), and that's also
how Qt is done. At least according to the Qt api designers, it gives a
more readable api. It can of course be ignored, but every time a
existing qt developer would like to fix bits and pieces of the frontend
only stuff, it would be a extra barrier of entry.

http://doc.trolltech.com/qq/qq13-apis.html


>   * Parameters:
>
>     - aptitude always passes non-basic types by const reference unless
>       there's a really good reason not to.  see, e.g., Package::Package
>       and

Yeah. when ever possible, prefer const references over copying the
non basic types.

>
>   * Pointers/memory management:
>
>     - I see lots of bare pointers here.  Could you give me a quick
>       summary of how memory management works in the Qt frontend?
>       aptitude strongly prefers smart pointers wherever it's feasible
>       to use them -- I guess widgets are probably managed by Qt itself,
>       but the Package object looks to me like a candidate for some
>       sort of smart pointer wrapper.

For making sure to free stuff when done, QObject has a 'All good parents
kill their children'-approach., so as long as the object hierachy is in
place (usually by passing parent in as part of ctor), things will be
cascadedly freed.

Qt has a number of smartpointer classes, QWeakPointer and QSharedPointer
for most usages of raw pointers, and a QScopedPointer, that basically
deletes it contents when it gets out of scope.
Thiago Maciera of Nokia, Qt development Frameworkss has written a long
blog post about the various smartpointers in Qt.

http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/08/25/count-with-me-how-many-smart-pointer-classes-does-qt-have/


Thanks for the review

/Sune