Re: What happens to DEC Ada?

[Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <%jra7.3545$257.153834@ozemail.com.au>, "Chris Miller" <chrismil@ozemail.com.au> writes:

> I seem to recall that it had a very smart recompilation algorithm that could
> drastically reduce the set of files that had to be recompiled after a change
> had been made. Instead of just using file timestamp and "with" clause
> dependencies, it would actually look into the code and deduce that most of
> the recompilations were unnecessary. Very fast - great for big projects.

It does still use the "Smart Recompilation" feature (if you choose it and
have bought the higher-priced "professional development option").

> Is this algorithm still patented ?. Are we ever likely to see it in Gnat /
> gcc ?

Although I rejoice in, and benefit from, smart recompilation, I think of
it as something related to the "keep a database of previous compilation
results" approach to compilation environment design.  GNAT, and for that
matter AdaMagic, take the "rescan the source each time" approach, so to
implement smart recompilation would seem counter-cultural.