Re: What happens to DEC Ada?

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen) wrote in message news:<NKj7nYr7sQCg@eisner.encompasserve.org>...
> Although I rejoice in, and benefit from, smart recompilation, I think > of it as something related to the "keep a database of previous 
> compilation results" approach to compilation environment design.  
> GNAT, and for that matter AdaMagic, take the "rescan the source each 
> time" approach, so to implement smart recompilation would seem 
> counter-cultural.


Well I guess this can seem counter-cultural if you are not familiar
with GNAT technology, but in fact the notion of smart recompilation
fits perfectly well. Indeed GNAT *has* a (very limited) notion of
smart recompilation (you can use the appropriate option, look in the
documentation, to request a mode in which reformatting, addition or
deletion of comments etc, is ignored and does not cause recompiles).

It would be technically feasible to do more, but simply not technically
worthwhile. Smart recompilation adds basic overhead to all compiles,
so overall it would not be a win. There are of course special cases
where it might help, but overall, our analysis is that it is a loss.