Re: An observation of Ada (may offend)

[mab@dst17.wdl.loral.com (Mark A Biggar)]

In article <3ku7us$117l@info4.rus.uni-stuttgart.de> ucaa2385@alpha1.csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de (Peter Hermann) writes:
>Robert I. Eachus (eachus@spectre.mitre.org) wrote:
>: In article <3kr20s$gqq@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> dewar@cs.nyu.edu writes:
>: > Presumably the right form of this pragma is
>: >   Pragma Child_UNits (unit, unit, unit);
>: > with the meaning that only the named units would be allowed as children.
>: > This is a perfectly legitimate pragma, and one that could be implemented.
>:     This actually is an improvement to my suggestion, and one I
>: recommend to all Ada implementors.  (In fact, if Robert Dewar doesn't
>: get around to adding it to GNAT, I may send it to him.)
>:     Of course, and the reason for posting this, is that one needed
>: form of the pragma is "pragma Child_Units(None);" or "pragma Child_Units;"
>: I perfer the second form, what do the rest of you think?
>I would not recommend that whole direction because
>one of the strengths of the child feature is exactly the fact,
>that the parent need not be touched further on.
>For Ada200X, the abs private part may be more convenient (if any)
>but, imho, this overburdening of the language is superfluous.

I don't see any reason for any of the above stuff.  A Child Package
is pretty innocuous in that unless your code does a with of the 
Child somewhere it has zippo effect on your program.  It would seem
that inspections and a little CM disipline should take care of any
problems.  And if that's not good enough your program/project already
has worse problems than added Child Packages.

--
Mark Biggar
mab@wdl.lroal.com