Re: Sharing generic bodies across instantiations.

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

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

> I have been very vigilant to preserve the ability for generic sharing in the 
> Ada Standard. (It's something that would be very easy to lose because of 
> some obscure combination of features.) I can't say for sure that I have kept 
> every such case out of the Standard, but there is agreement that at least 
> limited sharing (when the parameters are "similar enough") ought to be a 
> permitted implementation. "Universal sharing" (where there only one body for 
> each generic), as used in Janus/Ada, is more controversal (but is still 
> allowed by Ada 2005).

Like Randy, I am in favor of retaining the ability to share generic body
code (universal or otherwise) in Ada.  I am not in favor of trying
to make universal sharing efficient at run time -- that's not
possible.  It's a trade-off -- it may make compile time faster,
at the expense of run time.

It is not feasible to share generic spec code.

- Bob