Question about the signature of Application::initialize

[amosbird]

Why do we need Application & self as argument instead of using this directly?

poco/Util/src/Application.cpp

Line 181 in 191cbdc

void Application::initialize(Application& self)

[aleks-f]

I suspect because it is not a virtual function

[amosbird]

Interesting. Is there any reason to not make it virtual? There are a bunch of virtual functions in the class Application.

[aleks-f]

It actually is virtual, just not explicitly stated in Application:

poco/Util/include/Poco/Util/Subsystem.h

Line 59 in 191cbdc

virtual void initialize(Application& app) = 0;

And so, it is needed because a Subsytem can initialize other subsystems, so self is not necessarily the same thing as *this:

poco/Util/src/Application.cpp

Line 186 in 191cbdc

pSub->initialize(self);