Re: Calling inherited primitive operations in Ada

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Emmanuel Briot" <briot.emmanuel@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:b678b499-0cb1-4c64-a88f-cfa9a79893e6n@googlegroups.com...

>These packages are mostly implementation details. They are used to build 
>high-level
>packages similar to the Ada containers, except with much better code reuse, 
>more
> efficient, and SPARK-provable.

(Wading in where I should probably not tread... :-)

But they violate the #1 principle of the Ada.Containers: ease of use. One 
principle that we insisted on was that a single instantiation was the 
maximum we would use, because we did not want people moving from arrays to 
containers to have to replace one declaration with a half page of magic 
incantations. (This is the reason that there is no container interface, for 
one consequence, and certainly no signature packages.)

In general, people either undertand and like signature packages, or really 
do not understand them and just use them when insisted on. The standard 
containers in Ada needed to be usable by the maximum number of users, and 
insisting on bells and whistles that many don't understand does not help.

                        Randy.