Re: Why do so many companies use Apex?

[Pascal Obry <p.obry@wanadoo.fr>]

"Corey Ashford" <x@y.com> writes:

> One of the reasons that Apex appears to be slower than other
> compilers is that it is actually doing more work for you, to
> save you time down the road.  Apex retains persistent compilation
> information about units that it can use later to determine which
> units exactly needs to be recompiled when a change is made to
> any one of them.  As a simple example, in other compilers, changing
> a  comment in oft-with'd spec will cause massive recompilation.

That's not the case with GNAT. Have a look at the -m option.

> In Apex, the compiler will realize that there are no differences
> in the peristent compilation information, and thus no recompilation
> needs to take place.  Also, this persistent information is used
> to allow you easily navigate your source code to find object and
> type definitions.

GNAT does that too. Look at the .ali files written by the compiler. You have
full cross-ref info there. These info are used by gnatfind and gnatxref to
"navigate" into the sources. GLIDE does use these info too.

I won't comment on Rational Apex that I have never used. But please try GNAT
and you'll see that amazingly many nice features are there :)

Pascal.

-- 

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--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
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