Re: Implementing C/C++ style #include...

["Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com>]

I guess I've just seen it done enough different ways that work as well or
better that I don't really see any necessity for a preprocessor to do this
job. Managing different configurations can be handled with package body
substitution, static elimination of code via normal "if" statements, pragma
Debug, available configuration management tools, etc. As a result, I think
that trying to include special pre-processor directives in the source and
going through an extra pre-compilation step (fraught with peril!) is
unnecessary and potentially dangerous. (Try looking at some older C code
that may have very convoluted "#include" chains, etc. if you need an example
of how dangerous this can get.) I've never once seen a case where you could
accomplish some goal with a preprocessor that you couldn't accomplish with a
less error prone technique. So why ask for the trouble?

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Anton Gibbs" <anton@zooks.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:K$VNnBA+Jhv6Ewa4@zooks.demon.co.uk...
> I agree that Ada is rich enough to do the programming part of systems
> development without the need for a pre-processor but my experience is
> that a pre-processor can help enormously with configuration management.
> For example, to be able to include or exclude specific functionality
> according to a set of pre-processor options allowing different variants
> of a system to be built whilst retaining the same essential
> architecture. We even use this technique to cater for different target
> execution environments (compiled using different compilers and, in fact,
> different versions of Ada (83 vs. 95)).