Re: Ada checks suppression thanks to compilation options and Ada conformity

[Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com>]

On Nov 8, 3:09 pm, Christophe TRAVERS <christophe.trave...@free.fr>
wrote:
> I send this message in order to get your opinion on the following
> subject :
>
> An Ada program was supposed to take into account the Ada exceptions :
> CONSTRAINT_ERROR, NUMERIC_ERROR, ...
> The pragma SUPPRESS was forbidden. So, it was not used in the Ada source
> code.
> Everybody was convinced that the exception mechanism was fully
> operational in the embedded object executable.
>
> Nevertheless,  the object code was compiled thanks to the Ada TARTAN
> compiler with some compilation options  have suppressed all the "checks"
> in the entire object code.
>
> From my point of view, these compilation options that can suppress the
> checks are a way to get around the Ada language norm.
>
> What it you opinion on this suject?.

The compilation options are there for a reason---customers want them.
Generally, the idea is to leave checking on while you're testing a
program, and then when you're confident it works, you can compile the
program with checking off so that it runs faster.  Although you could
view this as "getting around the Ada language norm", there's nothing
wrong with it; the language designers wouldn't have added Suppress in
the first place if they intended for Ada to be a language for
"purists", rather than a language to be used in the real world.  I
doubt that there's any Ada compiler that doesn't have command-line
options to turn off checking.

If there's some sort of policy that forbids Suppress, but the code is
being compiled with options that achieve the same effect, it sounds
like there's a management problem.  Either the policy is too rigid to
be practical, or the programmers are too lazy to work within the
policy, or the programmers haven't been properly educated as to the
reason for the policy; or someone just doesn't know what they're
doing.

                                -- Adam