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From: Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Standard Ada Preprocessor
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 13:12:19 +0000 (UTC)
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Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com> wrote:
: Even if you have the same target hardware and two different compilers 
: (even from the same manufacturer sometimes!) you can have statements 
: that will compile on one but not on the other.

But then this is not an issue of program portability, but of
compiler differences or compiler bugs. To some extent Source Code Versioning
software and branches can help.

: Isolation with separate 
: bodies is sometimes difficult to do and always complicates the build 
: process. Some form of conditional compilation would make the job easier.

I'd prefer a conditional build process. IMHO, there should be a
declarative language for build processes, integrated with one
or more "source languages". ACE files (Eiffel), Project files (Ada),
VCS integration/awareness etc.
 
: Naturally that has risks and can lead to all sorts of abuse.

If you keep the #ifs out of the code, and instead declare the
target/compiler dependences in documents of their own right,
to be processed by a configuration preprocessor, that risk isn't
there, I think.


-- Georg