Re: Standard Ada Preprocessor

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

Even in embedded work it is sometimes important. I might have code that 
relates to some breadboard version of the system that dummies up some 
stuff that exists differently on the "real" hardware. Or I might want to 
make a version of some of the code that operates on a workstation by 
faking out hardware that exists in the real unit. Or I might have 
multiple turns of a hardware board that each have peculiarities that 
need to be coded around. Or I might have multiple versions of an RTOS 
with variations on system calls that change from one version to the next.

I've encountered all of these in real-world situations and sometimes I 
might have dealt with them by having separate bodies (often really 
difficult to manage in practice) or I dealt with them via conditional 
compilation because I was using C. I just know it happens enough where 
conditional compilation would be a useful thing and not always a matter 
of abuse. If someone thinks it isn't really needed because it can be 
dealt with via some kind of CM or build process - I'd suggest they need 
to work in some of the environments I've been in where you either don't 
have the tools or there are all sorts of complications that make this 
really hard to do.

Conditional compilation isn't always pretty - but then neither are rep 
clauses or other things that are regularly done because that's the 
easiest way to get the job done.

MDC

Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote:
> 
> There is still a strong need for conditional compilation.
> Not for embedded work, since you have very specific
> targets for that code. But if Ada is to support the
> general purpose computing environment, and to support
> portability, it must have better facilities for the
> portability issues that come up.
> 

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Marin David Condic
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