Re: Finalization of static package variables

[Markus E Leypold <development-2006-8ecbb5cc8aREMOVETHIS@ANDTHATm-e-leypold.de>]

Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com> writes:

> On May 9, 1:20 am, Stephen Leake <stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org>
> wrote:
>> Manuel Collado <m.coll...@lml.ls.fi.upm.es> writes:
>> > Variables declared in the global scope of a package body seem not to
>> > be finalized automatically at the end of the whole program (using GNAT
>> > 3.15p on WindowsXP).
>>
>> Is there some reason you are not using a more current version of GNAT?
>>
>> > If some of these variables contain certain GUI stuff, the program
>> > remains as a zombie process after the main procedure termination.
>>
>> Technically, that cannot be true; the "main procedure" is the
>> "environment task", and it does not "terminate" (in the Ada definition
>> of that word) until all of the tasks it has spawned have "terminated".
>>
>> I think that what you are saying is that there are some tasks that
>> have not terminated when the main procedure is ready to terminate, and
>> that in fact those tasks never terminate.
>
> Except that Manuel never said he was using tasks.  I'm envisioning
> that he probably has a controlled object whose initialization causes
> some Windows process to be spawned (either directly or via some
> function in some other GUI library), and finalization causes the
> process to be terminated.
>
>
>> If the type of the variable is derived from
>> Ada.Finalization.Controlled or Limited_Controlled, it will be
>> finalized when it goes out of scope. Otherwise, it won't be.
>>
>> However, a static package variable never goes out of scope, so that is
>> no help.
>
> No, I believe that all objects, including static package variables
> *and* including allocated objects that have not yet been deallocated,
> are supposed to be finalized when the environment task completes.
> 10.2(25), 7.6.1(10).

Absolutely right.

With Gnat, though, that isn't the case if the process is terminated by
an external signal, e.g. SIGINT from keyboard or the ^C handler in the
windows console.

I wonder wether it is that which is puzzling the OP.

Regards -- Markus