Dear GiNaC developer,

I was composing my fourth message about the the unused parameter in line 84 in basic.h (GiNaC 1.0.11) and about the trivial and 100% safe patch I have proposed to fix it. In another window I was creating a new CVS repository for GiNaC so that we could avoid patching your releases manually over and over again. I was lucky enough to have the inspiration to double check the archives of ginac-devel@ginac.de before hitting the "send" button. Having discovered that I was not completely ignored during all this time, I had a chance to erase a message you would not have liked. (I don't think replies to messages sent to ginac-devel should only be sent to the list, but anyway I have now subscribed it: from what I can see this entitles me to receive also some more spam).

I would now like to discuss the issue on purely technical grounds. The point is that we need to replace the following line (84) of basic.h

virtual void destroy(bool call_parent) { }

with the following

virtual void destroy(bool /* call_parent */) { }

We cannot follow the advice of Christian Bauer (*) to tell the compiler not to warn about unused parameters for the simple reason that we find these warnings very useful in our development work. In contrast, I believe the patch I am repeatedly proposing:

1) complies with the C++ standard; 2) does not cause problems with any the versions of all the C++ compilers we know of; 3) preserves the information about what the bool parameter is; 4) is good both for users that run with warnings on and for those switching them off.

I would be very grateful if someone could tell me what is so wrong with it that we have to set up a paraller CVS repository for GiNaC. Thanks a lot

Roberto

(*) "I suggest turning off that compiler warning. Yes, I'm serious."