Re: Fun with WebAda/GNAT

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Ronald says

  "Sure there is!  Just print the path names for the files/specs in the
  error message."

We have discussed this, but path names in typical Unix systems are so
long that this generates an unacceptable level of noise in the normal
case. We do of course print references for multiple definitions, so
I am not quite sure what that is about:

q.adb:2:03: "x" conflicts with declaration at q.ads:2

But are you really sure you want to see

/nile.a/ada/ada/gnatbugs/fixed/0000-020/q.adb:2:03: "x" conflicts with
declaration at /nile.a/ada/ada/gnatbugs/fixed/0000-020/q.ads:2

we think not. I suppose one could put in a switch, but there are lots of
switches already, and typically no one reads the documentation carefully,
so no one knows about them!

I certainly have never had trouble with the lack of full paths in error
messages, and it is not something that any of our users have ever requested.
Error messages are always a matter of balance, and we tend to trying to keep
them short and content rich.

A little tool that shows you where something is on the ada include path
sounds trivial, and useful in cases where someone is confused as to where
something is. Actually that would be nice to build into EMACS.