Modular programming

So far, our examples have been simple standalone subprograms. Ada is helpful in that regard, since it allows arbitrary declarations in a declarative part. We were thus able to declare our types and variables in the bodies of main procedures.

However, it is easy to see that this is not going to scale up for real-world applications. We need a better way to structure our programs into modular and distinct units.

Ada encourages the separation of programs into multiple packages and sub-packages, providing many tools to a programmer on a quest for a perfectly organized code-base.

Packages

Here is an example of a package declaration in Ada:

package Week is Mon : constant String := "Monday"; Tue : constant String := "Tuesday"; Wed : constant String := "Wednesday"; Thu : constant String := "Thursday"; Fri : constant String := "Friday"; Sat : constant String := "Saturday"; Sun : constant String := "Sunday"; end Week;

And here is how you use it:

with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO; with Week; -- References the Week package, and adds a dependency from Main -- to Week procedure Main is begin Put_Line ("First day of the week is " & Week.Mon); end Main;

Packages let you make your code modular, separating your programs into semantically significant units. Additionally the separation of a package's specification from its body (which we will see below) can reduce compilation time.

While the with clause indicates a dependency, you can see in the example above that you still need to prefix the referencing of entities from the Week package by the name of the package. (If we had included a use Week clause, then such a prefix would not have been necessary.)

Accessing entities from a package uses the dot notation, A.B, which is the same notation as the one used to access record fields.

A with clause can only appear in the prelude of a compilation unit (i.e., before the reserved word, such as procedure, that marks the beginning of the unit). It is not allowed anywhere else. This rule is only needed for methodological reasons: the person reading your code should be able to see immediately which units the code depends on.

In other languages

Packages look similar to, but are semantically very different from, header files in C/C++.

  • The first and most important distinction is that packages are a language-level mechanism. This is in contrast to a #include'd header file, which is a functionality of the C preprocessor.

  • An immediate consequence is that the with construct is a semantic inclusion mechanism, not a text inclusion mechanism. Hence, when you with a package, you are saying to the compiler "I'm depending on this semantic unit", and not "include this bunch of text in place here".

  • The effect of a package thus does not vary depending on where it has been withed from. Contrast this with C/C++, where the meaning of the included text depends on the context in which the #include appears.

    This allows compilation/recompilation to be more efficient. It also allows tools like IDEs to have correct information about the semantics of a program. In turn, this allows better tooling in general, and code that is more analyzable, even by humans.

An important benefit of Ada with clauses when compared to #include is that it is stateless. The order of with and use clauses does not matter, and can be changed without side effects.

In the GNAT toolchain

The Ada language standard does not mandate any particular relationship between source files and packages; for example, in theory you can put all your code in one file, or use your own file naming conventions. In practice, however, an implementation will have specific rules. With GNAT, each top-level compilation unit needs to go into a separate file. In the example above, the Week package will be in an .ads file (for Ada specification), and the Main procedure will be in an .adb file (for Ada body).

Using a package

As we have seen above, the with clause indicates a dependency on another package. However, every reference to an entity coming from the Week package had to be prefixed by the full name of the package. It is possible to make every entity of a package visible directly in the current scope, using the use clause.

In fact, we have been using the use clause since almost the beginning of this tutorial.

with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO; -- ^ Make every entity of the Ada.Text_IO package -- directly visible. with Week; procedure Main is use Week; -- Make every entity of the Week package directly visible. begin Put_Line ("First day of the week is " & Mon); end Main;

As you can see in the example above:

  • Put_Line is a subprogram that comes from the Ada.Text_IO package. We can reference it directly because we have used the package at the top of the Main unit.
  • Unlike with clauses, a use clause can be placed either in the prelude, or in any declarative region. In the latter case the use clause will have an effect in its containing lexical scope.

Package body

In the simple example above, the Week package only has declarations and no body. That's not a mistake: in a package specification, which is what is illustrated above, you cannot declare bodies. Those have to be in the package body.

package Operations is -- Declaration function Increment_By (I : Integer; Incr : Integer := 0) return Integer; function Get_Increment_Value return Integer; end Operations;
package body Operations is Last_Increment : Integer := 1; function Increment_By (I : Integer; Incr : Integer := 0) return Integer is begin if Incr /= 0 then Last_Increment := Incr; end if; return I + Last_Increment; end Increment_By; function Get_Increment_Value return Integer is begin return Last_Increment; end Get_Increment_Value; end Operations;

Here we can see that the body of the Increment_By function has to be declared in the body. Coincidentally, introducing a body allows us to put the Last_Increment variable in the body, and make them inaccessible to the user of the Operations package, providing a first form of encapsulation.

This works because entities declared in the body are only visible in the body.

This example shows how Last_Increment is used indirectly:

with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO; with Operations; procedure Main is use Operations; I : Integer := 0; R : Integer; procedure Display_Update_Values is Incr : constant Integer := Get_Increment_Value; begin Put_Line (Integer'Image (I) & " incremented by " & Integer'Image (Incr) & " is " & Integer'Image (R)); I := R; end Display_Update_Values; begin R := Increment_By (I); Display_Update_Values; R := Increment_By (I); Display_Update_Values; R := Increment_By (I, 5); Display_Update_Values; R := Increment_By (I); Display_Update_Values; R := Increment_By (I, 10); Display_Update_Values; R := Increment_By (I); Display_Update_Values; end Main;