Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dogie.macc.wisc.edu!gatech!hubcap!billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu From: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 ) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Header files Message-ID: <6613@hubcap.clemson.edu> Date: 27 Sep 89 19:47:27 GMT References: <24955@louie.udel.EDU> Sender: news@hubcap.clemson.edu Reply-To: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu Lines: 26 From article <24955@louie.udel.EDU>, by new@udel.EDU: > [Header files idea] > This would be less of an issue if linkers or compilers were smart > enough to only include the functions from a single module that were > actually used and if we all had demand-paged VM. Even this, however, > would not solve the "recompile everything" problem. I know very little > Ada, but it seems to me that I've not heard of this ability in Ada. Try the Telesoft TeleGen2 compiler. If you want the really serious details of how extensive the optimization is in this compiler, take a look at the Tri-Ada '88 proceedings; I believe there are several articles just on this one compiler's heavy-duty optimization strategies. This particular optimization is almost essential if one is to properly support ADTs (one of the things Ada is really good at doing), since the user will almost never use all of the ADT services provided. It would really be kind of ridiculous NOT to trim away the extra code. As far as recompilation is concerned, you can make use of Ada's separate compilation facility to achieve this directly. I don't do this because it would be a pain to have things scattered into umpteen different files, and I have no idea why you would consider this to be desirable. Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu