[Dune-devel] How to proceed with deprecation of DUNE_UNUSED_PARAM?

[Markus Blatt]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 10:24:40AM +0200, Christoph Grüninger wrote:
>Hi!
>
>Thinking further about a smooth transition path for DUNE_UNUSED I
>propose the following (extension of option 1):
>
>* Deprecate the macro DUNE_UNUSED, no warning will be emitted.
>* After Dune 2.8 we remove the CMake test, thus HAS_ATTRIBUTE_UNUSED
>will be always undefined and DUNE_UNUSED has no effect.
>* The user will get a warning for an unused variable and can investigate
>the problem. There is no guarantee that the user will act, but it
>increases the chances.
>* After Dune 2.9 we remove the macro.
>
>Any objections?
>
>Bye
>Christoph
>

Hi,

Personally, I am fine with this but only as long as DUNE_USED_PARAMETER 
stays as it is, because that is the only thing I am using.

Nevertheless I would like to raise the question:
What improvement is this for the user? What work is it saving us?

It seems a bit like people using our macros will get annoying warnings 
and finally will need to do additional work for little benefit. What is 
the justification for this? 

My personal conclusion would be to not use DUNE's macros again as they 
might turn out to be a maintenance burden in the end.

Markus

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