Re: Typical handling of packages through compilers

[Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com>]

On Jul 22, 2:25 pm, Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)
<yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> On 22 juil, 16:29, Adam Beneschan <a...@irvine.com> wrote:
>
> > By the way, "inner packages" don't have any effect at all on this, and
> > I'd guess that that is true for other compilers as well.  Inner
> > packages are not at all reflected in the structure of the object
> > file.  Our linker considers each code or data item individually to see
> > if it can be eliminated; it doesn't care at all about whether they've
> > been grouped into another package.
>
> >                                            -- Adam
>
> So if I have
>
> package P is
> ...
>    package Q is
>       ....
>    end Q;
> end P;
>
> then with most compiler, Q will not be linked unless it is referenced

No, that isn't what I said, I think.  What I said is: some linkers
will link in all of package P (including P.Q) if any of it is
referenced; other linkers are able to include only those items in P
(including P.Q) that are needed.  For this purpose, though, the linker
won't know what items are in Q and what items aren't.  But I guess
this does mean that, for the second type of linker, if none of the
items in Q are referenced, then none of them will be linked in, but
this has nothing to do with whether they're inside Q or not.  The
linker will probably have no knowledge of "Q" as an entity or group of
entities.

> Adam, are you a member of a compiler vendor team ?

Yes.  www.irvine.com

                                   -- Adam