Re: How to get a »Conventional Ada Library« (Was: Ideas for Ada 200X)

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

I don't know what this group has produced or aims to produce, but my 
understanding of an "API" is not the same thing as that of a "Library". 
An API seems to me to be something along the lines of "If one day, Real 
Soon Now, you're going get motivated to build a package to do this job, 
its spec ought to look like this...." Whereas a library is more along 
the lines of "Here's the package to do this job..."

One is an interesting intellectual exercise that may or may not ever be 
realized and may or may not ever be considered "Part Of The Language". 
The other is a concrete reality I can use to get something done. I leave 
it as an exercise for the student to determine which is which. :-)

Remember that it is a key element of success for a library that the 
vendors be willing to agree that it should be part of their compiler 
distribution. Are the vendors on board with this WG and agreeing to 
implement whatever they come up with? (I'm not trying to be a wet 
blanket here - just realistic about what it takes to turn something like 
this into a success. At least some of the vendors got on board with ASIS 
& that seems to have a future of sorts. Albeit as a tool for a very 
limited set of developers. Are any vendors backing *any* SIGAda effort 
to define/produce a library?)

MDC



Martin Dowie wrote:
> 
> 
> There is such a WG:
> 
> http://www.acm.org/sigada/wg/apiwg/
> 
> (thanks to Dirk Craeynest for the link)
> 
> 


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Marin David Condic
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