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From: "Matthew Heaney" <mheaney@on2.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Pre-Elaboration clarification.
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 12:55:30 -0500
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"Clueless" <chris@dont.spam.me> wrote in message
news:v59L7.42261$RI2.21722340@news2...
> Are there any basic rules of thumb that an "Intermediate" level
> programmer(as I was declared by my CS teacher) should follow in Ada as
> regards data types and spec files?

In general, you should always defer package dependencies to the body, or to
a child.

> I've made a BIG point of avoiding unecessary coupling as you pointed out.
> As I'm not writing very "large" programs in Ada yet, I havent really run
> into any problems with Data types and elaboration.

My comment wasn't about elaboration issues specifically.  But it seemed as
if you had a dependency on package Command_Line in a spec, when it wasn't
strictly necessary.

> Is there anything that
> I should be practicing regularly, which might be peculiar to Ada95, that
> would help me avoid problems once I get into developing "larger" pieces
> of software?

Managing dependencies among compilation units isn't specific to Ada95 -- the
techniques are necessary in C++ as well.  You can read John Lakos' Large
Scale C++ Software Design for ideas that apply to either C++ or Ada95.
There's also a section in Norm Cohen's book, about minimizing dependencies
among Ada packages.