Strong typing and shared packages

From: Kathy McKinley <mckinley_at_.....>
Date: Mon Jun 11 2007 - 13:48:27 PDT
I had an action item from last meeting to start an email discussion
about a point of confusion. We were discussing the binding requirements
type compatibility proposal (http://www.eda-stds.org/sv-xc/hm/0094.html), 
and confusion arose from this paragraph:

>Implications of Typing Rules 
>
>One of the ways in which strong typing is defined and enforced is to say 
>a given type is unique and the only way to declare objects of that type 
>is to reference that specific type in the declaration of an object.  
>Kind of obvious really, but there is no other structurally equivalent type.  
>What does it mean to support strong typing in a mixed language environment?  
>The same idea applies.  The conceptual model that the user should have is 
>that the "same" type should be used to declare objects in each language.  
>The practical model is that a single description of the strong type is 
>declared by the user and it implies a single equivalent type in the other 
>languages. The general requirement for transparency suggests that it 
>should not matter which language is used for that description.  A unified 
>and practical way to specify this is to support the abstraction of shared 
>packages.  Such a package contains types which can be referenced in any 
>of the languages. The implementation model is also practical, deriving 
>an equivalent package or header file with a namespace.  For now, 
>regardless of how it is specified or implemented, one has to accomplish 
>this in order to properly support strong typing.

Some interpreted this paragraph to describe a conceptual model and how
it might be applied, and others felt that this paragraph might propose
a specific definition of strong typing involving shared packages.

John, do you want to clarify your intent when you wrote it?

Does anyone have an opinion about either possible direction?

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Received on Mon Jun 11 13:48:48 2007

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