Why are opEquals/opCmp arguments not in or const for Objects?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, March 21, 2013 08:29:28 deadalnix wrote:
> Wouldn't that trigger bunch of false warning on legitimate
> overloaded opSomething ?

I'm not sure that overriding a deprecated function triggers a deprecation 
warning, but regardless, for opEquals and opCmp, that wouldn't be a problem, 
because all classes would be being changed so that their opEquals and opCmp 
don't take Object, so the deprecation warnings would be a _good_ thing. It 
would probably be more of a problem for toString and toHash though, since they 
don't take arguments. Deprecating them won't work if overriding them triggers 
deprecation warnings, and the fact that you'll be forced to override them as 
long as they're in Object and then won't be allowed to once they're out of 
Object will probably mean simply removing them from one release to another and 
forcing everyone to immediately change their toHash and toString methods so 
that they don't break.

So no, the situation isn't entirely clear-cut, and we'll have to look at it 
carefully to avoid as much immediate breakage as possible, but we may be 
forced to change some stuff in a way that causes immediate breakage. All that 
would depend on what the exact changes are that have to be made and the exact 
situation with override and deprecated and all that. And I don't think that 
anyone has thought that through completely yet.

- Jonathan M Davis