Discussion: Have an enum for Device Identifiers

[NobodysNightmare]

Hi there,

this Pull Request is (at least initially) intended as a discussion point. I have no big feelings that you will eventually merge this.

What is it?

A small change, introducing an enum for the device identifiers:

public enum DeviceIdentifier
{
    BrickletAmbientLight = 21,
    BrickletAnalogIn = 219,
    // ...SNIP...
    BrickServo = 14,
    BrickStepper = 15
}

This enum is used in the Enumerate-Callback instead of an integer. It should also be used in GetIdentity, however this involves more changes to the generators and I would only do this if you think its worth it.

Why?

Thread 1
Thread 2
Thread 3

Second thread is for C, but it also shows the explorability issues associated with that. Having a DeviceIdentifier adds some benefits:

• more type safety (it's C#)
• better explorability
  • using an IDE you get auto-completion for DeviceIdentifiers
  • using no IDE you have a clear hint where to look (DeviceIdentifier tells you there is a type you can look up, int tells you nothing, you have to guess)

Why only C#?

In my opinion this should be included in all language-bindings that feature type-safety and where enums are usual. Best example is Java.
However for the discussion one example is enough.

Why not Merge?

I think you already realized why you might not want to merge that: Backwards-compatibility.
Merging this request would break current implementations of enumerate-callbacks, because they now have an DeviceIdentifier-parameter instead of an int-param. However, it would clearly not impact the hardware-compatibility.

I might have proposed this exact change earlier, but back then I did not dive into the code deep enough.

What do you think of this proposal?