Re: Elaboration worries

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>]

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> writes:

> I forget the exact reason that Elaborate_Body doesn't work, but the effect
> is that you can't count on it to eliminate elaboration problems completely.

Hmm.  Dispatching calls at elab time, maybe?  Elab_Body does ensure that
the body will be elaborated before all clients.

>    (a) make your package Preelaborate if possible (Pure is so limited that
> no real packages ever qualify) -- but this is usually impossible because I/O
> and Calendar aren't Preelaborate. Which means that you can't trace or log a
> Preelaborate package (well, there *is* one way to do it, but it adds runtime
> overhead);

I have put debug output code in Pure and Preelab packages by "cheating".
Like this: write a simple I/O package (I like to avoid the complexity
of Text_IO).  Use pragma Export(Ada) on all of its procedures.
Then write another package that declares all the same procedures,
with pragma Import(Ada), and put pragma Pure in that.

This is cheating, so I only do it for temporary debugging output.

- Bob