Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1999 21:38:56 +0200 (CEST)
From: "Felix A. Croes"
To: DGD Mailing List
Subject: Re: [DGD]upgrading old clones

Geir Harald Hansen wrote:

> I just had an idea, and it is not well thought through yet, but I thought
> I'd throw it in here and we'll find out whether it is good or not. ;)
>
> I think sometimes a kfun to upgrade clones of an old issue may be useful.
> It need only work when there is a newer issue whose master object is
> not destructed.  The older issue may not have any inheriting dependents,
> but has at least one cloned dependent, of course, or it would not exist.
>
>    object upgrade_clones(int issue_id)
>
> This function would upgrade all clones with that issue ID to the newest
> issue, adding to its number of clones.  It returns the new master object
> issue of the clones, which already exists before this function call, or nil
> if it fails somehow.  When this call succeeds, the old issue is removed.
> Hmm, maybe it would be better to return the number of clones upgraded.

It is arguably wrong for a cloneable object ever to have different
issues; after all, shouldn't all clones have the same behaviour?
Therefore I prefer simply to make destructing an object with clones
impossible.

Regards,
Dworkin