Re: AQ&S Guidance on pragma Elaborate_Body

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

Matthew Heaney says

<<It may be true that it "is not that uncommon," but mutual dependency of
packages indicates that you have a pair of highly cohesive abstractions,
and they should really be combined into a single package.>>

I strongly disagree. This is a recipe for giant packages for no good reason.

For example, it is perfectly reasonable to have a list package that
allows lists of sets (within the sets package), where the sets package
is implementd in terms of lists -- there are many such examples.

Sure, if there is mutual recursion at the spec level, then you combine
the packages, indeed Ada insists on it, although many feel that one of thje
big weaknesses in Ada 95 is that it does not allow mutually recursive
package specs. But at the body level there is absolutlely not reason to
take this position.