Re: ANNOUNCE: Avatox 1.0 is now available

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> writes:

> It is reported that determining whether a type is limited takes 96
> lines of Ada (ASIS) code - but this is a property that every Ada
> compiler has a subprogram to calculate. It should be directly
> available in ASIS.

Via Traits, yes? (which struck me as more than a bit of a kludge when
I grasped it). It takes me about 60 lines to process all the
possible/appropriate traits (assuming that the ASIS tree is
well-formed, so that if a declaration has an
Asis.An_Abstract_Limited_Private_Trait it's appropriate to mark it
abstract, limited and private).

I see that this isn't always quite obvious: I have

    type Request is limited private;

giving

    <private_type_declaration limited="true" private="true">
      <defining_identifier>Request</defining_identifier>
      <private_type_definition limited="true" private="true">
      </private_type_definition>
    </private_type_declaration>

which seems odd (I guess that the definition is of the anonymous type
of which the declaration is the first named subtype?)

> Moreover, virtually everything in ASIS is currently optional, which
> makes writing ASIS programs that are portable very difficult. Plus,
> the standard itself is poorly written, and it's organization is such
> that it is arguable that ASIS users (not to mention implementers)
> need a license from ISO. So we're going to be busy redoing the
> entire standard.

This sounds like good news.