Re: AQ&S Guidance on pragma Elaborate_Body

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

<<Hmmm, you're probably about the only one left here that believes this.
The "withing problem" (and this is for SPECS, not just the above sort
of case) has been discussed here extensively and the general consensus
is that this inability (to define mutually dependent types across
package boundaries) is a hole in the language.  The great maker
himself, STT, has come to hold this position.  BTW, anyone know
whatever became of Tucker's proposal of "with package.type" for
solving this??  I know it wasn't going to be "formally" accepted
somehow, but wasn't there going to be some sort of general agreement
to provide this?
>>

The best thing you could hope for is a general agreement on what it should
look like if it is provided. Beyond that you have to let the market decide
whether vendors should work on this. We have customers who are running into
trouble with elaboration issues, which is why we have put work in on the
elaboration problem, but so far, none of our customers have been willing
to even request this feature, let alone offer to fund its development.

Of course if several vendors implement it, then there is pressure for
other vendors to follow suit, but it takes someone *really* interested
to get a vendor to be the first. After all, we are all a little
hesitant to get into the genuine language extension business!