Re: Why can't objects be static in Ada?

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Mark Lorenzen" <mark.lorenzen@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1127d366-d36c-4abf-8590-4b8c0e2b5446@googlegroups.com...
...
>How can it be ensured that a library written in Ada does not require any 
>elaboration.

Why would anyone care? You don't try to specify implementation techniques 
for for loops, why do it for elaboration?

Performance isn't likely to be an issue (the elaboration code, if any, only 
runs once). It would take a pretty contrived program to notice the cost. 
(And, in my experience, initializing memory slows down programs if there is 
a lot of memory involved, as all of the memory has to be paged in in that 
case.)

Some programs have outside requirements on the code (such as no heap 
allocation or the like), but those generally go beyond just elaboration and 
there are Restrictions for dealing with them.

Stuff like mapping to ROM or the like is going to be target-dependent in any 
case. And for such mapping, you're better off having less stuff that 
requires writability (as that requires RAM), and more ROM. That's one of the 
reasons that we ignore C.4 (since we had quite a few embedded 80186 
customers back in the day - smaller RAM and ROM requirements are a thing).

So, to me, preelaborate is not solving any problems other than getting rid 
of a few elaboration checks. And GNAT has found a much better way to do 
that. So, in particular, if you are using GNAT, preelaborate buys you little 
other than error messages.

                                                   Randy.