Elaboration order (was: Effort to Port TSG to Ada-95 and How Fast it Ran in Gnat)

[Mats Weber <Mats.Weber@elca-matrix.ch>]

> <<>     This is not porting advice, but really programming advice (write
> >     code in a correct manner). In particular, missing pragma
> >     Elaborate's are instances of bugs in the original code.
> 
> or bugs in the language definition ? :-) :-) :-)>>
> 
> I see lots of smileys here, but I still do not konw what you are getting
> at. Do you think there are ways in which this could have been handled
> better, that would have been practical?

I wrote an article on the subject that was published in Ada Letters a
few years ago (I don't remember which issue, but I can send a copy to
anyone who is interested).

The article is also part of my thesis (sections 2.7 and 4.5) which is
accessible at
http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Team/MW/Ada-Extensions/Ada-Extensions.html

Essentially, I think it solves all *reasonable* occurences of
Program_Error being raised at elaboration time because some subprogram
or generic body has not been elaborated.

Of course, you may or may not agree with my view of what is a
"reasonable" elaboration order dependence, but I think that
incorporating my solution into Ada 95 would have solved most cases in
practice.