Re: Isnt Gnat irrelevant ? ( was Re: Will the World ever seesomethingbeyond GNAT 3.15p?)

[Christopher Douty <christov@folly.rockjack.net>]

Martin Dowie <martin.dowie@baesystems.com> wrote:
> Jeff C wrote:
>> Actualy the latest mingw release is indeed 3.2.0-rc-1 but the mingw
>> project also has releases of individual tools (like gcc 3.4.2)
[snip]
>> The nice thing is this goes most of the way toward the "single
>> download" that people tend to want.
> 
> What about ASIS? I couldn't live without AdaBrowse... :-)

Ah, there's the rub.

ACT has only been contributing the main compiler technology into the main GCC
project.  The MinGW project takes the GCC releases and patches them up to
run on Windows, so gcc-3.4.2 MinGW special passes a fair bit of ACATS.
Unfortunately it is *just* the compiler.  ASIS, Florist, GLADE, etc. are
all stuck in the past.  The Win32 binding project compiles just fine, but
ACT's package will only install if GNAT 3.15p is already installed.

You could try using martin Kruchik's port of ASIS and florist is irrelevant
for Windows.  I haven't tried yet.  Enough compiler internals have changed 
that I wouldn't particularly trust it.

There is also the debugger problem.  Normal gdb sources won't compile under
MinGW, and no recent gsb has been ported.  IIRC the gdb distributed with GNAT
3.15p for windows is actually cygwin based.

I am hoping that ACT will do a full release of GNAT tools soon, but it really
doesn't look likely.  The recent releases of GtkAda and GPS 2.1 are great,
but they don't quite integrate with any of the publicly available toolsets.
I hope that they are not waiting for Ada2005. :-|

Cheers,
	Chris Douty