From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,3869f0598191b11d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.megapath.net!news.megapath.net.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 17:51:19 -0500 From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada References: <40FBBB16.8050206@noplace.com> <40fd03b4$1_1@baen1673807.greenlnk.net> <40FD0932.5080604@noplace.com> Subject: Re: Porting ADA source Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 17:51:57 -0500 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4910.0300 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 64.32.209.38 X-Trace: sv3-W7nIoJWIu54oBeJ/gxdmjHTF6CnM1/pJdLGKgDKNjwDg/OsUs/lD/EKoAmpwj33Ke0RMopSthaAPA2t!Q43R3wx9RdvhMN7sfTi2572AsW5sRtIgm576vTaIIhUQllKunqjyjRaW0fvrtoamT2CukldXJxMw X-Complaints-To: abuse@megapath.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@megapath.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2295 Date: 2004-07-20T17:51:57-05:00 List-Id: "Marin David Condic" wrote in message news:40FD0932.5080604@noplace.com... ... > But the mission is to take code body X and get it from its existing > platform onto another - not redesign the system. Time spent reorganizing > the code and setting up a build process does not directly move that > mission forward. Hence, it would be nice to get some kind of quick and > dirty fix that doesn't mean spending excessive time reworking the > existing product. A conditional compilation directive can be that sort > of fix. Its just that it is viewed dimly as a sub-optimal formal > technique. Oh well.... If it is a long-lived system (and this one appears to be) a quick and dirty solution simply sets the developers up for many years of pain in maintenance. It's better to do it right the first time (or, as in this case - a very common one, the second time). Case in point: when we ported Janus/Ada to the U2200 computers, we had to change a lot of assumptions about the sizes of things. (We had of course assumed character = byte = 8 bits, and of the U2200 was a 36-bit word machine.) Rather than simply coding a different set of assumptions, we decided to restructure everything so that the compiler depended on a small set of packages that encoded host and target information. That eliminated future redos for similar issues. I'm sure the customer would have been happier in the short run if we hadn't restructured everything, but it meant that virtually all bug fixes only needed to be made once -- a huge time savings in the long run. Randy.