So I have a base class that has many children. This base class defines some readonly properties and variables that have default values. These can be different, depending on the child.
Readonly properties/fields allow you to change the value of the variable inside the constructor and also the definition, but nowhere else. I get a ‘readonly variable can only be assigned to in a constructor’ error if I try to change the value of an inherited readonly variable in the child class’ constructor. Why is this and how can I work around this, without Reflection?
My intention: To allow user extensibility through scripts where they can only change certain fields once.
Adam has the right answer. If you’re worried about the space it will take up (number of parameters in the constructor?) then you should address that as a different problem with a different solution: create a BaseConfig class, that contains all those properties and that is all that needs to be passed in. Base can then either assign all it’s readonly fields from BaseConfig’s properties, or you can instead have Base hold just one readonly field of type BaseConfig and refer to that for the values.
As to why this is, see C# constructor execution order regarding when each class’s readonly fields would be initialized/initializable.