Re: Would an *AdaScript* language be a good / bad idea?

[Darren New <dnew@san.rr.com>]

Pascal Obry wrote:
> > Right, Ada is not designed for this. Although the distributed annex
> > comes close; you could change out a partition without restarting the
> > other partitions.
> 
> I'm not sure this is true. To use this object the type must be known at
> _compile_ time. Darren said "a new type at run-time", and to this question
> I would answer no. The distributed annexe does not help here.

Well, think of how Java does it. Your partition could define a tagged type
called Transaction, and you could load up different partitions with derived
types called AddTransaction, RemoveTransaction, etc as you develop them.

Still messier than just sourcing an additional file, mind. I do things all
the time like
  Read the name of the requested transaction.
  See if the file "trans-$name.tcl" exists.
  If not, return an error.
  Otherwise, load trans-$name.tcl and invoke the trans_$name procedure,
    passing all the arguments from the transaction.

I don't have to change anything to add a transaction. Just put the file in
the code directory. :-) *That* is the sort of thing people do with scripting
languages. 

But you could do a similar thing with the distributed annex. Recompile the
"handle transaction" code to add the new transaction and add it to the
name->access_to_procedure table, and then at the end of the current
transaction, kill the old partition and start the new partition and somehow
get them hooked up again. Not sure how you'd actually do this, using (say)
GNAT, tho.

-- 
Darren New 
San Diego, CA, USA (PST). Cryptokeys on demand.
** http://home.san.rr.com/dnew/DNResume.html **
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