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From: "Jeffrey R. Carter" <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.not.acm.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Idiomatic formatting for empty package
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:12:21 +0200
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Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:48412
Date: 2017-10-10T09:12:21+02:00
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On 10/09/2017 11:45 PM, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> "Jeffrey R. Carter" <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.not.acm.org> wrote in message
>>
>> For instance, see package Ada.
> 
> John also pointed this out privately. Sorry that I missed it. Still, Ada is
> not a very good example:
> 
> (1) Ada was created after the fact to group a bunch of unrelated packages
> together. One hopes that no one thinks that such a practice is a good idea!
> The grouping should be of things that are related (like Ada.Strings and
> Ada.Containers), and aas I noted, typically there are things that are shared
> that make sense in the root package.
> 
> (2) For instance, had the IO packages been grouped together (without all of
> the other unrelated stuff), it would make sense for the IO exceptions to be
> declared in that parent package. It wasn't done in Ada as the organization
> of the IO libraries predates child packages. (Argubly, that should have been
> done anyway in Ada 95, but it's not as obvious given the capabiliy needs.)

I agree with most of what you say. I think the purpose of Ada was namespace 
control: Where before we had a bunch of pkgs using up names we might want to 
use, after we had a single hierarchy under Ada. (Of course, the Ada-83 
compatibility renamings undo that.) My project naming convention is similar: 
Everything in project Project has a name beginning with Project. Usually there 
are no common declarations that would go in the parent pkg.

My real reason for bringing up pkg Ada was as something for the OP's 
consideration. As an empty pkg spec in the ARM, it might be considered the 
idiomatic formatting for same.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"[I]f we should ever separate, my little plum,
I want to give you one little bit of fatherly advice. ... Never
give a sucker an even break."
Poppy
97