Question

To follow from my previous question about virtual and multiple inheritance (in a cross platform scenario) – after reading some answers, it has occurred to me that I could simplify my model by keeping the server and client classes, and replacing the platform specific classes with #ifdefs (which is what I was going to do originally).

Will using this code be simpler? It’d mean there’d be less files at least! The downside is that it creates a somewhat "ugly" and slightly harder to read Foobar class since there’s #ifdefs all over the place. Note that our Unix Foobar source code will never be passed to the compiler, so this has the same effect as #ifdef (since we’d also use #ifdef to decide what platform specific class to call).

class Foobar {
public:
  int someData;

#if WINDOWS
  void someWinFunc1();
  void someWinFunc2();
#elif UNIX
  void someUnixFunc1();
  void someUnixFunc2();
#endif

  void crossPlatformFunc();
};

class FoobarClient : public Foobar;
class FoobarServer : public Foobar;

Note: Some stuff (ctor, etc) left out for a simpler example.

Update:

For those who want to read more into the background of this issue, I really suggest skimming over the appropriate mailing list thread. Thing start to get interesting around the 3rd post. Also there is a related code commit with which you can see the real life code in question here.

Answer 1

Preferably, contain the platform dependant nature of the operations within the methods so the class declaration remains the same across platforms. (ie, use #ifdefs in the implementations)

If you can’t do this, then your class ought to be two completely separate classes, one for each platform.