Re: Parent/child dependencies and internal library units

[Adam Beneschan <adambeneschan@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday, July 23, 2014 9:20:27 AM UTC-7, Victor Porton wrote:
> I noticed that child units depend on their parents. 
> 
> As such making parent dependent on a child makes a dependency loop.
> 
> Before noting this feature of Ada language, I thought parent units could be 
> implemented based on their child units, but that does not work, because 
> making parents dependent on children is a circular dependency.

When you talk about parent units being "implemented" based on their child units, are you talking about the *body* of a parent unit (which is where "implementation" normally lives)?  There's no problem with making the body of a parent unit depend on a child unit.  A child unit depends on its parent's *specification* but not on its body, so having the body of the parent depend on the child does not create a loop.

It might help to give a short example of what you want to write (even if it's not legal Ada because of a circular dependency).  As it is, I'm not clear on what you're trying to do.

                                -- Adam