Re: Suggestion about best practice with .gpr files

[Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com>]

On Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 2:22:16 PM UTC-6, Jeffrey R. Carter wrote:
> On 5/30/21 7:37 PM, mockturtle wrote: 
> > 
> > Do there exist some kind of "best practice" for this?
> The best practice is not to use project files. When everything is is Ada, they 
> only add unnecessary and non-portable complexity. Unnecessary complexity is a 
> sign of incompetence.

True; Ada's structuring is such that a project-file is *almost* unnecessary. I remember reading, when doing some research on build-systems, someone remarking that "build-systems are the consequence of using a language not meant for engineering." -- Given this, the general lack of needing a "build-system" for Ada is a good sign, and a testament to how Ada really *is* meant for Software Engineering.

That said, the place where Ada isn't quite up to the task is configurations, which is primarily what GPR files are used for; I've done some initial work on re-purposing Ada's generics as a "project file". (It could use a restricted set of acceptable parameters and "ASIS-processing" them such that user-inputs could be queried/provided automatically [hence the restriction on formal-parameter types].)

> 
> The same is true of build directory structures. 

I have come to deeply despise using the file-system as the repository for sources, along with "magic" environment-variables.
There are TONS of advantages that could be had with a database-based system; see: http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~perry/work/papers/icsm87.pdf and https://www.mindprod.com/project/scid.html
Yes, more design-work up-front, but it yields better properties... just like how sorting a collection allows you to have search-functions that are faster than one-at-a-time linear.