Re: Visibility problems with package instantiations.....

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@acm.org>]

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

> "Stephen Leake" <stephen_leake@acm.org> wrote in message
> news:mailman.11.1070584255.31149.comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org...
> > Well, yes, GNAT refuses to compile a file containing multiple units.
> > But even in other systems, the re-compilation dependencies get
> > confused when there are more than one unit in a file (which is why
> > GNAT refuses to do it); it is that effect I was talking about.
> 
> 'fraid I don't follow. Certainly it is possible to compile more than you
> need to in that way, but if compilation is fast enough, that's not really an
> issue. 

On a "large enough" project, compilation is never "fast enough". This
is exactly the issue. I guess "confused" was too strong a word.
"inefficient" is better.

> If the units are completely out of order, you'll have trouble, but
> that hardly is surprising. But the make tools work (I know ours
> does), and it works well to put a number of specs in the same file.

If you ignore the recompilation inefficiency, yes, this can work well.

> For instance, in Claw, there are a number of packages that we had to
> move in the hierarchy. The spec file then also contains a rename of
> the package to its original name. It would hardly make sense to give
> a one line item its own source file, with all of the configuration
> management/standard comments like copyrights that that entails - the
> result would be pretty large and it would be hard to find the actual
> code. :-)

Yes, that's true. There are special cases on both sides :).

-- 
-- Stephe