297315 - Sort nsICategoryManager.enumerateCategory alphabetically

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: XPCOM, defect)

Description

[Benjamin Smedberg]

I have found myself several times sorting the results of
nsICategoryManager.enumerateCategory alphabetically in client code. It is very
simple to do this before handing out the enumerator, and a lot harder afterwards.

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Attachment: Sort enumerateCategory() and remove some manual sorting code, rev. 1

Comment 2

[Darin Fisher]

Comment on attachment 185857 [details] [diff] [review]
Sort enumerateCategory() and remove some manual sorting code, rev. 1

Please add documentation to nsICategoryManager.idl

Comment 3

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

darin, we discussed this over irc.  no changes should be made to the IDL as it
is frozen and any any mention of ordering will either violate the origanal
contract or assert the behavior of some implementation. 

Comment 4

[Darin Fisher]

Then perhaps the IDL should state clearly that the ordering is not specified. 
Otherwise, someone might look at the implementation and make the false
assumption that the result is always sorted.

Comment 5

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

good idea.

Comment 6

[Darin Fisher]

Of course, it also means that our own code would be violating that comment :-/

Maybe somehow comment that in Gecko 1.8 and later, the nsICategoryManager
implemented by XPCOM returns sorted results?

Comment 7

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Isn't that exactly what my change to nsXPCOMCID.h does?

Comment 8

[Darin Fisher]

Yes, it does.  But, nsICategoryManager itself doesn't specify or not specify. 
It should probably say something.  Maybe say that sorting behavior is
implementation specific (e.g., see nsXPCOMCID.h for information about the XPCOM
category manager implementation).

Comment 9

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Fixed on trunk. There was an error in nsCommandLine.cpp (rv = NS_ERROR_ABORT
instead of rv == NS_ERROR_ABORT) which is now also fixed.