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From: Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com>
Subject: Re: Binary files vs Portablity vs Ada
Date: 1999/11/08
Message-ID: <8074m8$bk8$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1
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References: <7vt67r$qv0$1@coward.ks.cc.utah.edu> <7vurt3$ojd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
 <7vuto0$pv0$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <7vvrin$gp9$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
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Date: 1999-11-08T00:00:00+00:00
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In article <7vvrin$gp9$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <7vuto0$pv0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>   Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
> > There's no reason to
> > expect that your vendor would do something goofy with the data
> > (like compress it or something), but there's nothing stopping
> > them either.
> There is specific implementation advice on this subject:

Perhaps. But advice is just that; advice. No guarantees. If you are
trying to do something universally portable, you can't count on
implementation advice.


> Now an implementation could conceivably refuse to follow this
> implementation advice, but then it must document this fact:

That's only an issue if you have two particular implementations you want
it to work between. But no one asked about portability between two
particular compilers. The issue is portability in general.

Even in the two compiler case, you're nessecarily not off the hook. The
"required" documentation is often inadaquate, out of date, or just plain
wrong. I have found two different vendors for which that applies (not
ACT, but then I haven't read through ACT's annex M). When I mentioned
this here, I was told there's no "validation test suite" for
documentation. So apparently a crappy annex M implementation (or perhaps
even *no* annex M at all) will not in any way hamper a vendor's ability
to get or keep an Ada validation.

--
T.E.D.


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