From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,38159b1b5557a2e7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-02-10 06:59:09 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news2.telebyte.nl!news.jgaa.com!news.hacking.dk!pnx.dk!munin.nbi.dk!not-for-mail From: Jacob Sparre Andersen Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Standard Ada Preprocessor Date: 10 Feb 2004 15:59:07 +0100 Organization: Munin Sender: sparre@sparre.crs4.it Message-ID: References: <400A9B48.3060100@noplace.com> <400BD4B5.6000307@noplace.com> <400BDB7C.40100@noplace.com> <400D2150.6000705@noplace.com> <400E72F9.8060501@noplace.com> <100upo7ln5e3k59@corp.supernews.com> <401118FD.701@noplace.com> <40126B5E.8050205@noplace.com> <99wTb.4905$bp1.159188@news20.bellglobal.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: sparre.crs4.it Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: munin.grove.home 1076425148 8741 156.148.70.170 (10 Feb 2004 14:59:08 GMT) X-Complaints-To: sparre@munin.nbi.dk NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 14:59:08 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:5398 Date: 2004-02-10T15:59:07+01:00 List-Id: Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote: > So the challenge is to use the best technology (Ada) and yet be > capable of accomodating a large range of "environments". Agreed. But don't you agree that allowing a preprocessor to work on package specifications isn't exactly good Ada style. Then you can't trust the package specifications anymore. Although I prefer a simple "choose an appropriate package body" method, I can see some benefits of allowing full preprocessing of package bodies. My main problem right now is: Is it possible to specify a sensible common method for asking the compiler questions about the target environment? How? My first thought was to tell the user (of the compiler) to give the compiler some appropriate flags, indicating the information needed for selecting which package bodies to choose. But that would still leave the problem of making those configuration decisions to the user instead of automating them. Could we ask the compilers to be able to tell us if some library (a string indicating a library name) exists in a specific version (a string indicating a version)? What do compiler vendors say to that? What other kinds of compile time switches do we want to be able to make? Either based on user choice or on the configuration of the target system. > I think because of the targeted end user, Open Sourced projects have > a special "need", compared to perhaps the "typical" Ada project > (whatever that is ;-) Yes. But users of Open Source software already seem to have agreed to use Autoconf/Automake as their "standard" compile-time configuration tool. How does that work on non-Unix systems BTW? > I never suggested that someone should just plop it into the ARG's > lap without doing homework/whatever. All I can do is speak for > myself here, and say that I just wanted to have an open discussion > on the merits of some sort of conditional compilation. Good. Maybe we can actually come up with a suggestion we can sell to the ARG. > The result of this discussion seems to suggest that most are > resisting the idea, for different reasons. So be it. Maybe with > time, resistance to the idea will fade as more people try to address > the practical problems that Open Sourced projects face in Ada. One > can hope ;-) I hope we can find a solution that makes it easier for people who receive a source code package with an Ada program to just compile and run the program, _without_ letting the whole C preprocessor hell loose in Ada too. Greetings, Jacob -- "Hungh. You see! More bear. Yellow snow is always dead give-away."