Re: Separate Compilation in Programming Languages

[<adaworks@sbcglobal.net>]

"Dirk Heinrichs" <dirk.heinrichs@online.de> wrote in message 
news:fpn25e$du5$1@online.de...
> adaworks@sbcglobal.net wrote:

>> Do you find it useful in your own practice?   Do you still use the "is
>> separate" feature in
>> a package body?
DH>
DH> When put under version control, one can can easily track the development of
DH> functions, instead of files as is the case for most projects developed in
DH> C/C++, where the entire class is put in one large .cpp file.
DH>
Yes. Version control is useful, even for Ada projects.   However, version
control does not solve the dependency issue.
DH>
DH> While it is doable in C/C++ as well, it can't be expressed in the language
DH> itself, which means that the compiler has no means of telling wether one .c
DH> file logically belongs to another or not.
DH>
DH> However, in either language it requires a bit of discipline from the
DH> developers.
DH>
Agree.  This is always much simpler in Ada than in other languages.   There is
question of whether it is an important enough distinction to make a difference
when choosing a language for a large-scale software system.   I know it was
a very big issue on some of the early Ada projects such as BSY-2 which
was originally designed without using Ada's dependency management via
separate compilation.