[SOLVED] Disambiguation of Same Name Classes

[DRoscoe]

I have a static library, aop_data that depends on another static library: DataCollection. The DataCollection library defines a namespace: cto4_data and in this namespace is a class named "State" The aop_data library also defines a class named "State" which is not scoped within a namespace. The problem I am having is that my Qt project is failing because its trying to use the wrong "State" class even though I am not explicitly specifying the cto4_data namespace AND I am including only the aop_data header for the State class in the class that is causing the problem:

../../../core/aop_data/hazards/AdsbTrajectoryChangeList.cpp:633:55: error: no member named 'getAltitude' in 'cto4_data::State'
double altitude_delta = tcp.getAltitude() - state.getAltitude().getFeet();
~~~~~ ^
../../../core/aop_data/hazards/AdsbTrajectoryChangeList.cpp:636:44: error: no member named 'getAltitude' in 'cto4_data::State'
TCR_DEBUG(2, "altitude is " << state.getAltitude() <<

[...]

There really should be no confusion about which version of "State" I am trying to use.

I am asking this question here because this same situation exists in my non-Qt project, but MSVC++ does not complain about it. It's only my Qt project that is having this problem.

[DRoscoe]

Turns out I was being too lazy with my INCLUDEPATH definitions. I was including .pri files which essentially declared library dependencies, which also specified include paths for that library. In most cases, all I really wanted were the include paths, but by putting the library dependencies in as well, I had to avoid circular dependencies which meant that the include path for cto4_data::State was defined before the include path for aop_data, so lines like #include "State.hpp" were bringing in the wrong class definition.

The solution is to separate the INCLUDEPATH definitions from the library definitions, so they may be included independently from build order.