Re: Q: SPARK visibility rules and inherit annotations.

["Peter C. Chapin" <pcc482719@gmail.com>]

Phil Thornley wrote:

> Peter,
> 
> The problem comes from the reference in one child of TMLib to another
> child of TMLib.
> 
> Where this is the case, in the code and annotations - but not in the
> inherit or context clauses - the common parent must not appear in the
> name.
> 
> So change the line:
>    (Raw_Data   : in TMLib.Cryptographic_Services.Octet_Array;
> to:
>    (Raw_Data   : in Cryptographic_Services.Octet_Array;

That did the trick, thanks. Now that you mention it, I seem to recall this
coming up for me before, although it was a while ago now.

Thanks for your explanation as well.

One thing I like about Ada in general is how you can express a design in
package specifications and then let the compiler check a few things about its
consistency before embarking on the implementation. With SPARK that effect is
even greater. For example in my Cryptographic_Services package the Examiner
initially complained about how there was no way to initialize one of my
private types. It was an oversight on my part (I was missing a critical
operation). I would have figured it out eventually, I'm sure, but it was nice
to have the issue caught earlier rather than later. It made me reflect on
what I was really trying to accomplish with the package and that can only be
a good thing.

Peter