From: Eric Hodel <drbrain@...7.net>
Date: 2010-04-19T14:56:46+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:29619] Re: [Bug #3169] RDoc crossref confused by instance and class methods having same name

On Apr 18, 2010, at 21:28, Kornelius Kalnbach wrote:
> On 19.04.10 05:36, Eric Hodel wrote:
>> RDoc now maps :: to class methods and # and . to instance methods
>> when cross-referencing.
> Mapping Foo.bar to Foo#bar is a strange decision, in my view. Foo.bar
> should be equal to Foo::bar.

Mapping Foo.bar to Foo#bar for cross references is backwards compatible.

Previous versions of ri displayed "Foo::bar" when bar was a class method (currently RDoc display what you typed in, a future version will display :: for class methods again).  If you don't know whether the method you're looking for is an instance method or a class method '.' allows you to let ri do the work of figuring it out.

I've seen no de-facto mapping in the community of Foo.bar to either Foo::bar or Foo#bar.

In a future version RDoc cross-references will map Foo.bar to Foo::bar if there is no Foo#bar like ri.  This will make RDoc's convention of using '.' to mean either instance method or class method universal.