Re: The Dreaded "Missing Subunits"

["Marin David Condic" <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org>]

Here's a better idea than a file extension convention: Why not have all Ada
compilers allow the user to specify what the convention is for their
project? Most of the compilers I've seen have some ability already to store
configuration or initialization information in some manner. If its a
command-line compiler (id est, Gnat) it could be a switch set by the IDE or
there can be some special file for a project that identifies the convention
as well as other useful initialization & option stuff.

It may be handy from some kind of portability perspective or user
recognition perspective if everyone used the same filename extension to mean
the same thing, but I don't think its that necessary. An OS might not even
make much or any use of the extension to begin with, so for a given
implementation, it might not make much sense anyway. If the world can agree
on what the file name convention should be, fine. If not, the vendors need
only provide some reasonably easy means of specifying what the convention is
for a project and most of the problems go away.

MDC
--
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
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Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote in message
news:wccptvb9fv1.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com...
>
> Contrast with Ada, where GNAT wants .ads/.adb, Rational wants
> .1.ada/.2.ada, and AdaMagic wants .spc/.bdy.  I know GNAT and AdaMagic
> have ways of overriding the convention (not sure about Rational),
> but you have to go to extra trouble to use a convention different
> from what the compiler wants.  Wouldn't it be better if all Ada
> compilers supported the same file-naming conventions out of the box,
> without using nonstandard pragmas Source_File_Name and the like?
>
> What file-naming convention should I use, if I want to be
> portable across all compilers?  For C, the answer is easy.
> For Ada, it's not.
>