Re: ANN: Ada source code decorator

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@acm.org>]

"Jeffrey R. Carter" <spam.not.jrcarter@acm.not.spam.org> writes:

> Stephen Leake wrote:
>> I don't see how that is remotely possible. The whole point of ASIS is
>> to access the knowledge the compiler has about the source. Thus the
>> compiler has to provide functions to access that knowledge.
>
> The point of ASIS is to provide a standard way to access information
> about the source that the compiler has saved. The format of this
> information is not specified. I suspect Wright is hoping an Ada-0X
> version of ASIS will specify the format, using XML.

Ok, now I see; that does make sense.

I don't think that will happen as part of the ASIS 05 effort; there
are not many people working on it, and they don't see that as their
mission. They are working on extending the ASIS 95 API to cover the
new Ada 2005 features, and possibly fixing any problems with the
current API.

I believe the original decision to specify an API, rather than a
format, was to allow each compiler vendor to use a format that was
similar to their already-existing internal compiler structures, thus
making it easier for each compiler vendor to support ASIS. I suspect
that argument still holds. But it might be reasonable to add an
optional standard XML format.

If enough people want it to happen, they should get together and
produce a working example of such a standard format, then lobby to get
it approved as a secondary standard.

Note that vendors will only support such a format if they see money in
it. So people who want it must be able to say they will pay a
reasonable fee for it, and that there are still others who will also
pay such a fee. Or they need to fund the entire development themselves.


I have not used XML processors, so I can't comment on whether they are
"less clunky" than using the ASIS API. But I can see that having a
standard XML representation of the Ada source would make it easier for
people who are familiar with XML to build useful tools. And since
there are certainly more people familiar with XML than with ASIS, that
would be a good thing for Ada.

-- 
-- Stephe