Virtual Inheritance: Error: no unique final overrider

Question

I know virtual inheritance is covered here before and before asking this question I went through the detail of the virtual inheritance and went through the details of a similar problem like the followings:

multiple-diamond-inheritance-compiles-without-virtual-but-doesnt-with and why does gcc give me an error - final overrider

My problem is slightly different as I am not using pure virtual function and explicitly using virtual inheritance to have one unique 'Base' class. The hierarchy is as follows:

   Base
    /\
   /  \
 Der1 Der2
   \  /
   Der3

I know about the dreadful diamond on derivation issue and that's why I am using virtual inheritance.

#include <iostream>
class base
{
public :

    base()
    {
        std::cout<<"base()" << std::endl;
    }
    virtual void fun()
    {
        std::cout<<"base" << std::endl;
    }
};

class der1: virtual public base
{
public :
    void fun()
    {
        std::cout<<"der1" << std::endl;
    }
};

class der2 : virtual public base
{
public :
    void fun()
    {
        std::cout<<"der2" << std::endl;
    }
};

class der3 : public der1,public der2
{
    public :
    /*void fun()
    {
        std::cout<<"der3" << std::endl;
    }*/
    //if I took out the comment and the function 
    //is defined it compiles fine as expected
};

int main()
{
    base *p=new der3;
    //used scope operation explicitly to avoid ambiguity
    p->base::fun(); //here it complains about 'no unique final overrider for fun'
    return 0;
}

My understanding is since I am using virtual inheritance there should only be one instance of the 'base' and using the scope operator I can invoke without ambiguity the virtual fun function. The function is not pure virtual. If I do leave and implementation on the 'der3' class it is giving me compiler error:

error: no unique final overrider for ‘virtual void base::fun()’ in ‘der3’

I can see how this issue works (final overrider). But mine doesn't. Is it getting confused between Base::fun, der1::fun and der2::fun? Does the scope operator help in anyway?

Any clue or help is appreciated. I am using g++ 4.6.3.

Answer 1

The most-derived class has to provide an implementation of the virtual functions in the virtual base class - otherwise how would it provide that base class interface, given the intermediate classes (i.e. your der1 and der2) provide two alternatives already - which one should it call? You have to disambiguate the situation (i.e. with der3::fun()).

Sure you're not actually calling der3::fun() as you're explicitly requesting base::fun(), but that doesn't mean the rules don't apply, any more than thinking you could instantiate an abstract class if you don't try to call the pure-virtual functions.... The program is ill-formed until the code ties off these loose ends.

Answer 2

Using the scope resolution operator to specify that you want to call base::fun doesn't make the error go away because the program would be ill-formed even with an empty main(). You simply are not allowed to have a situation in which a virtual function has more than one final overrider in any derived class that exists in your program.

Informally, just because trying to call p->fun() would be ambiguous, the program is ill-formed even if you don't do it.

Note: This is in contrast to the situation you have with overloaded functions, in which potential ambiguity is allowed---perhaps even unavoidable---as long as you avoid a call that actually would be ambiguous. Why are the rules different? Basically it is because even constructing an object of type der3 cannot be done in a sensible way---which version of fun should the vtable point to?