Re: Advice, tasking and hardware

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

"Jeffrey R. Carter" <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.not.acm.org> writes:

>> Spark doesn't use tasking, are there many dangers in using tasking
>> with hardware?
>
> SPARK 2014 includes Ravenscar
> tasking. (http://docs.adacore.com/spark2014-docs/html/lrm/tasks-and-synchronization.html)

But SPARK GPL 2015 doesn't support tasking. We live in hope that SPARK
GPL 2016 will.

I'm not sure of the best way to delegate tasking to the non-SPARK part
of a program while maintaining SPARK for as much as possible. I suppose
you'd have to be very restrained in your use of tasking (e.g. perhaps
only use Ravenscar tasking, have the task call a SPARK subprogram to do
the work).

I had a program with a large PO/task job dispatcher with multiple
entries and requeues in the PO, which was hugely improved when I had to
reimplement under Ravenscar.