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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Can .ads be compiled alone?
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2014 20:01:41 -0600
Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation
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Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:23074
Date: 2014-11-07T20:01:41-06:00
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"Robert A Duff" <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote in message 
news:wccppczx79i.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com...
...
>> Did it actually say "compile error"?  I get a very different message
>> when I try it, and that message *is* further information.
>> Specifically, I get this:
>>
>>   cannot generate code for file machinery_1_3.ads (package spec)
>>   to check package spec for errors, use -gnatc
>
> Recent versions of gnat leave out the second line above.
> It's kind of pointless -- either you saw some error messages
> (other than the "cannot generate code" one), or you didn't.
> Either way, there's no point in then typing:
>
> gcc -gnatc -c machinery_1_3.ads
>
> because you already have the information you were looking for.

Not quite true: it's certainly useful for the guy who's writing batch files 
for new ACATS tests and left out the -gnatc on a package specification 
(usually of a B-Test). The second part is helpful for such users. (That may 
be a community of one. ;-)

OTOH, most users should be using Gnatmake or GPRBuild to compile things and 
would never see this message either way; Ada users compiling individual 
files usually have missed the big picture. (Even for the ACATS, I use 
Gnatmake to compile ACATS C-Tests. B-Tests unfortunately have to be compiled 
individually so that the errors can be tied to a particular source unit.)

                              Randy.