Ramifications of re-introducing asynchronous exceptions to the Ada language

Abstract

Re-introduction of asynchronous exceptions into the Ada language has been suggested as a means to solve certain problems in intertask communication. The author argues that such re-introduction would provide inconsistent and nondeterministic semantics, disallow several important classes of optimization, cause considerable distributed overhead, complicate program proof and verification efforts, prove error-prone to use, and offer little new functionality. Further discussions of alternate solutions to the requirements which motivated asynchronous exceptions are encouraged.