Re: Ada Pure or Preelaborate or ? in Adare_net

[Simon Belmont <sbelmont700@gmail.com>]

On Friday, December 31, 2021 at 11:13:33 AM UTC-5, daniel...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi! 
> 
> I and a friend created an Ada network lib where, 
> from the begining, we tried very hard to make It a Ada Pure. 
> 
> From the examples dir, the lib worked as expected (in gcc-10.2 gcc-11.2 and gcc-12). 
> To our surprise, what most caught the attention of the group's friends was the fact that the lib was Ada Pure and if that was correct. 
> 
> For this reason, if really 'is' pure, not pure, preelaborate or what (?), pleeeeeeaaase, we ask the group's Ada Language Lawyers to help analyze and suggest modifications if necessary. 
> 
> link: https://gitlab.com/daresoft/network/adare_net/-/tree/202x 
> for Ada version use 2012 and or 202x. 
> 
> Best Wishes and Happy New Year, 
> Dani.

It seems to be mostly just a thin binding to a bunch of C functions, so the applicability of any Ada feature is mostly a moot point. The Ada compiler has no control or visibility into the C domain, so while on the one hand your packages are technically Pure, on the other hand the C functions can violate those "purity rules" all they want, which might be misleading to users expecting otherwise.  You don't use 'Unchecked_Access either, but obviously that doesn't mean the C functions are somehow prevented from creating dangling pointers.  Personally, I would have the interfaces reflect the reality of the actual behavior (which in the case of C code you don't control, is usually assume-the-worst).

-sb