Re: Crosspost: Help wanted from comp.compilers

["John R. Strohm" <strohm@airmail.net>]

"Hyman Rosen" <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message
news:1058275843.720814@master.nyc.kbcfp.com...
> John R. Strohm wrote:
> > Sounds sort of like the database at the center of a Stoneman APSE to me.
> > That idea dates back to, what, the late 1970s?
>
> The idea may date back, but as I recall, the implementations were
> horrible, leading to frequent unnecessary "recompile the world"
> scenarios. I am guessing that Microsoft will do a much better job.

Hyman, as I recall, you admitted not so long ago that you had no real
experience with Ada, which strongly implies that you have no real experience
with any real Ada toolset.

This being the case, your recollection that "the implementations were
horrible" would have to your recollection of something someone told you.
Given your known, and frequently-stated, antipathy towards Ada, I would tend
to believe that your recollection might be faulty, and/or you may be
remembering something told to you by someone who might have had an agenda
that, to put it charitably, would not predispose him towards intellectual
honesty in a matter relating to Ada.

As it happens, I used the Telesoft MC680x0 and Tartan 320C30/C40 Ada
toolsets.  Neither were overly prone to unnecessary recompilation, *IF* you
understood the recompilation rules and the rationale behind them.

Now, it was EASY to build systems that had horrendous recompilation
problems.  Usually, in order to build such a system, you had to screw up
some fairly basic software engineering things.  For example, if you build a
system-wide "types" package, then every time you touch that package, you get
to recompile the world.  If you build a system-wide "magic numbers" package,
same problem.  Observe that the exact same problems arise in C/C++.  The
answer is, of course, DON'T DO THAT.