Advice, or *Advice*? (was: Binary files vs Portablity vs Ada)

[Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <wccaeonfthh.fsf@world.std.com>,
  Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com> wrote:

> The reason certain rules are written as Implementation Advice is that
> we didn't know how to formalize the rule.  It's not that Impl Advice
> is any less important than the "real" rules.  So, I think you can

But are all the advice at that level, or are some really just
suggestions? From context and the attitudes I've seen from vendors, a
lot of it appears to be the latter.

> count on responsible implementers to not disobey the advice without
> good reason. If you find otherwise, send in a bug report.  If you find

Here's an example: Until recently 2 of the 3 Ada compilers we have here
at work did not follow the implementation advice in 11.4.1(19), putting
*nothing* in Exception_Message. (Disclaimer: One of these was Gnat,
which I *believe* had this problem. I don't have the "luxury" of
having obsolete compiler documentation for Gnat laying around, like
I do for my other compilers :-) ).

When I complained to other compiler's support group about this over a
year ago, it was treated as a feature enhancement request, not as a
*bug*. We finally got a version that followed the advice about 4 weeks
ago. As a point of comparison, this same company has taken no longer
than 2 months to fix any of the other bugs that I submitted that were
non-advice LRM compliance issues.

As for the other compiler (well...ok, Gnat), I have heard reports that
the situation has improved there recently, but I haven't yet checked it
out. Others will be more qualified than I to say what it is doing, and
what their policy towards this "bug" is/has been over the past year or
so.

--
T.E.D.


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