From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,a9f89faeb8f41ad0 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) Subject: Re: ifdef replacement for GNAT Date: 1998/04/11 Message-ID: <1998Apr11.070547.1@eisner>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 343045051 References: <352287EE.1CFB@tolstoy.mdc.com> <352B8208.41C6@tolstoy.mdc.com> <86g1jm2gcf.fsf@zappa> <6gn4q1$ee6@drn.newsguy.com> Reply-To: Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam X-Nntp-Posting-Host: eisner.decus.org X-Trace: news.decus.org 892292756 14777 KILGALLEN [192.67.173.2] Organization: LJK Software Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-04-11T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <6gn4q1$ee6@drn.newsguy.com>, nabbasi@earthlink.net writes: > I think the hardest thing is to foresee in advanced what the platform > specific calls will be. or what the platform specific components will be. > > for example reading a directory file I do not think is available on windows > as is done on UNIX. and so this have to be wrapped (or abstracted). This does not seem so hard to me if you start with multiple operating systems not particularly related to each other (i.e., not all Unix, not all Windows, etc.). After you have found the operations which differ among Solaris X86 (always pick the smaller subset), MicroVMS (yes, it had Ada), Windows 3.1, OS/2 and MVS, you have minimized your future work in discovering new areas which are uncomon. The worst thing is to start with one operating system and presume that all others are like it. Windows programmers and Unix programmers seem to be most prone to this pattern; the rest of us know from the start that we are in a minority :-). Larry Kilgallen