Re: Attributes 'Version and 'Body_Version

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

"Nick Roberts" <nickroberts@adaos.worldonline.co.uk> wrote in message news:<9trpj1$4e6v2$1@ID-25716.news.dfncis.de>...
> I think there's some mileage in the idea that it might be useful for
> 'Version and 'Body_Version to (be able to) return something more than just a
> checksum (or the like).

<<rest of peculiar ideas deleted :-)>>

I am not sure I understand what on earth Nick was talking
about here, but for sure it has nothing to do with the
existing attributes (*)

I think what happens here is that people see the word
Version, and it triggers all kinds of entirely irrelevant
baggage.

The idea is that if two partitions share a package, and
communicate in a way that uses this package, they need a
way to make sure that they are using the same *compiled*
version of the package. How this is guaranteed will depend
on the system. For example, in a conventional Ada 83 style
library system, it will be good enough to store a precise
enough time stamp of the time of compilation, since two
packages can only have the same time of compilation in
such a system if they are indeed the same (and depend on
all the same packages).

This is the *very limited* intention of these attributes,
they are not in any sense relevant for the purposes of
general version control, let alone the more extensive
ideas that Nick presents.

If any of these extended ideas have merit, I would suggest
completely disentangling them from the existing attributes,
starting by using entirely different names, otherwise you
will perpetuate the confusion.

(*) by the way, MD-5 hash codes are indeed used to guarantee getting
the right version of things on the
internet (have a look at the Farber True Names patent
for details of the idea).