3.11 Declarative Parts

Ramification: The elaborated state is only important for bodies; certain uses of a body raise an exception if the body is not yet elaborated.

Note that "prior" implies before the start of elaboration, as well as during elaboration.

The use of the term "normal completion" implies that if the elaboration propagates an exception or is aborted, the declaration is not elaborated. RM83 missed the aborted case. 

Discussion: AI83-00180 specifies that there is no elaboration check for a subprogram defined by a pragma Interface (or equivalently, pragma Import). AI83-00430 specifies that there is no elaboration check for an enumeration literal. AI83-00406 specifies that the evaluation of parameters and the elaboration check occur in an arbitrary order. AI83-00406 applies to generic instantiation as well (see below).

{8652/0014} {AI95-00064-01} {AI05-0177-1} A subprogram can be completed by a renaming-as-body, a null_procedure_declaration, or an expression_function_declaration, and we need to make an elaboration check on such a body, so we use “body” rather than subprogram_body above. 

Discussion: A protected type has only one elaboration “bit,” rather than one for each operation, because one call may result in evaluating the barriers of other entries, and because there are no elaborable declarations between the bodies of the operations. In fact, the elaboration of a protected_body does not elaborate the enclosed bodies, since they are not considered independently elaborable.

Note that there is no elaboration check when calling a task entry. Task entry calls are permitted even before the associated task_body has been seen. Such calls are simply queued until the task is activated and reaches a corresponding accept_statement. We considered a similar rule for protected entries — simply queuing all calls until the protected_body was seen, but felt it was not worth the possible implementation overhead, particularly given that there might be multiple instances of the protected type. 

Reason: As specified by AI83-00149, the check is done by the activator, rather than by the task itself. If it were done by the task itself, it would be turned into a Tasking_Error in the activator, and the other tasks would still be activated. 

{AI95-00114-01} The syntax for declarative_part is modified to remove the ordering restrictions of Ada 83; that is, the distinction between basic_declarative_items and later_declarative_items within declarative_parts is removed. This means that things like use_clauses and object_declarations can be freely intermixed with things like bodies.

The syntax rule for proper_body now allows a protected_body, and the rules for elaboration checks now cover calls on protected operations.

The syntax rule for later_declarative_item is removed; the syntax rule for declarative_item is new.

RM83 defines “elaborated” and “not yet elaborated” for declarative_items here, and for other things in 3.1, “Declarations”. That's no longer necessary, since these terms are fully defined in 3.1.

In RM83, all uses of declarative_part are optional (except for the one in block_statement with a declare) which is sort of strange, since a declarative_part can be empty, according to the syntax. That is, declarative_parts are sort of “doubly optional”. In Ada 95, these declarative_parts are always required (but can still be empty). To simplify description, we go further and say (see 5.6, “Block Statements”) that a block_statement without an explicit declarative_part is equivalent to one with an empty one. 

{8652/0009} {AI95-00137-01} Corrigendum: Changed representation clauses to aspect clauses to reflect that they are used for more than just representation.

{8652/0014} {AI95-00064-01} Corrigendum: Clarified that the elaboration check applies to all kinds of subprogram bodies.

{AI95-00420-01} Defined “declaration list” to avoid confusion for various rules. Other kinds of declaration list are defined elsewhere.