Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Richard Kenner]

In article <27eqku$o5t@klaava.Helsinki.FI> stickler@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Patric 
M Stickler) writes:
>What about GNAT. Is it just an academic exercise, or is it expected
>to be an "industrial strength" compiler for "real" projects. I'm in
>general very impressed with the quality and portability of GNU
>applications, and for that matter sympathetic to the FSF cause, but
>could someone in-the-know tell me what the actual involvement of the
>FSF is in the GNAT project. Does NYU simply have permission to base
>GNAT on gcc, or does the FSF actually plan to promote the use of Ada 9X.
>Will GNAT become like GNU Smalltalk, which although OK for learning,
>is too clumsy for real development? (IMHO, no flames please)

Let me address a number of your questions.  First of all, GNAT is
certainly not an "academic exercise".  I don't know what an
"industrial strength" compiler would necessarily mean, but our goal is
to make it at least as reliable as GNU C.  Even in its present very
preliminary state, it is being used for a significant "real" project:
itself!  Most of the GNAT developers no longer use any Ada compiler
other than GNAT.

Although we have not yet done any significant Ada-specific
optimizations, we are quite pleased both with our compilation speed
and performance of the generated code.  Both are at least 3 times
better than that of the commercial compiler we previously used, which
is why we switched to using GNAT internally.  If you write an Ada
subprogram at the same semantic level as a C function, you should get
the identical machine code for both on most GCC targets.  Once we
finish, you should even be getting better code for the Ada subprogram
in some cases, since we can do a better job determining which pointers
cannot alias to each other and other variables than can be done for C.

We don't need "permission" to base GNAT on GCC, since the whole
purpose of the GNU Public License is precisely to encourage such
noncommercial uses of GCC.  The FSF does not itself promote the use of
any one of its tools, so it will not promote Ada.

There is significant cooperation between the FSF and the GNAT project.
We have had a number of meetings with Stallman (RMS).  I am the member
of the GNAT project that is most responsible for the interface between
the front end and GCC and the person who is responsible for making the
necessary enhancements to GCC.  I am also one of the primary GCC
maintainers for the FSF and will shortly have primary responsibility
for the maintainance of GCC as a whole.

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[David Poole]

>What is the current state of Ada 9X compilers. I'm aware of GNAT
>and plan to evaluate in soon, but what about the commercial
>vendors? Are there any commercial compilers that either already
>or will soon support the 9X extensions. Or are the vendors waiting
>for the final ANSI aprooval, or worse, until the last minute when 
>mandated customers must switch to 9X for new projects?

  Meridian has a beta program for their 9X for Windows or Win-NT, I'm not
sure.  My dad is part of this and has been working with it.  I don't know
much beyond that (expected release dates, how good it is, etc).

Dav(e|id)
-- 
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Poole                        | 
dpoole@hydrogen.oscs.montana.edu   | if( 6*9==42 ) panic();

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Raymond Blaak]

stickler@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Patric M Stickler) writes:

>Also, what is the general interest of Ada programmers in 9X. I'm
>not familiar with the general Ada scene, so I'm interested to know
>how much Ada programmers themselves are demanding 9X saavy compilers.

I want an Ada 9X compiler YESTERDAY! The improvements in Ada 9X majorly
enhance the language's usefulness while remaining in a strongly typed
environment. The variant record and 'ADDRESS tricks one uses in Ada 83 to
implement OO style programming and callbacks now can be done properly.

Ada 9X! Ada 9X! Ada 9X! The interest is off the scale.

Cheers,
Ray
blaak@csri.toronto.edu

P.S. The GNAT project may just be the best thing that has happened for Ada.

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!pipex!sunic!news.funet.fi!klaava!klaava!not-for-mail]

In article <27f4gs$m9k@cmcl2.NYU.EDU> kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner)
 writes:
>In article <27eqku$o5t@klaava.Helsinki.FI> stickler@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Patric
 M Stickler) writes:
>>What about GNAT. Is it just an academic exercise, or is it expected
>>to be an "industrial strength" compiler for "real" projects. I'm in
>>general very impressed with the quality and portability of GNU
>>applications, and for that matter sympathetic to the FSF cause, but
>>could someone in-the-know tell me what the actual involvement of the
>>FSF is in the GNAT project. Does NYU simply have permission to base
>>GNAT on gcc, or does the FSF actually plan to promote the use of Ada 9X.
>>Will GNAT become like GNU Smalltalk, which although OK for learning,
>>is too clumsy for real development? (IMHO, no flames please)
>
>Let me address a number of your questions.  First of all, GNAT is
>certainly not an "academic exercise".  I don't know what an
>"industrial strength" compiler would necessarily mean, but our goal is
>to make it at least as reliable as GNU C.  Even in its present very
>preliminary state, it is being used for a significant "real" project:
>itself!  Most of the GNAT developers no longer use any Ada compiler
>other than GNAT.

This is what I had hoped (and half expected) to hear, but it's nice to
hear it in any case.

>
>Although we have not yet done any significant Ada-specific
>optimizations, we are quite pleased both with our compilation speed
>and performance of the generated code.  Both are at least 3 times
>better than that of the commercial compiler we previously used, which
>is why we switched to using GNAT internally.  If you write an Ada
>subprogram at the same semantic level as a C function, you should get
>the identical machine code for both on most GCC targets.  Once we
>finish, you should even be getting better code for the Ada subprogram
>in some cases, since we can do a better job determining which pointers
>cannot alias to each other and other variables than can be done for C.

I find this *very* encouraging. Although I'd be willing to take a slight
performance hit for the other benefits of the language, being able to claim
equal performance and even potential increases in performance over C and C++
helps to justify the choice of Ada 9X for our projects.

>
>We don't need "permission" to base GNAT on GCC, since the whole
>purpose of the GNU Public License is precisely to encourage such
>noncommercial uses of GCC.  The FSF does not itself promote the use of
>any one of its tools, so it will not promote Ada.

Sorry, I should've thought this part of the question through better. Of
course the FSF won't be playing favorites with any of it's tools. I was more
concerned with robustness and completeness, and worried that GNAT would be
like GNU Smalltalk (i.e.  rather clumsy and in many ways incomplete and "not
yet ready for prime time" and not showing any signs of improvement). 

>
>There is significant cooperation between the FSF and the GNAT project.
>We have had a number of meetings with Stallman (RMS).  I am the member
>of the GNAT project that is most responsible for the interface between
>the front end and GCC and the person who is responsible for making the
>necessary enhancements to GCC.  I am also one of the primary GCC
>maintainers for the FSF and will shortly have primary responsibility
>for the maintainance of GCC as a whole.

Boy is *this* encouraging, the primary maintainer of GCC with a positive
attitude towards Ada 9X. Of course, we wouldn't want Ada 9X to get any extra
favors over the rest of the "children" now, would we ;-)

On a side note, are there plans to produce an OOP library for Ada 9X similar
to (or perhaps even ported from) libg++? Or is one in the works or already
finished?

Regards,


/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
  Patrick M. Stickler  OH2LUV, KC4YYY    The comments contained herein
  WSOY - Information Systems Division    do not necessarily reflect the
  Helsinki, FINLAND    (psti@wsoy.fi)    official views of my employer.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!pipex!sunic!news.funet.fi!klaava!klaava!not-for-mail]

In article <1993Sep18.163712.8933@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> blaak@csri.toronto.e
du (Raymond Blaak) writes:
>
>Ada 9X! Ada 9X! Ada 9X! The interest is off the scale.
>
>Cheers,
>Ray
>blaak@csri.toronto.edu
>
>P.S. The GNAT project may just be the best thing that has happened for Ada.

Ok, we have one strong vote of interest. Any others? ;-)

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
  Patrick M. Stickler  OH2LUV, KC4YYY    The comments contained herein
  WSOY - Information Systems Division    do not necessarily reflect the
  Helsinki, FINLAND    (psti@wsoy.fi)    official views of my employer.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[agate!spool.mu.edu!darwin.sura.net!news.dfn.de!fauern!news.th-darmstadt.d]

In article <27f4gs$m9k@cmcl2.NYU.EDU> kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard  
Kenner) writes:
> 
> Let me address a number of your questions.  First of all, GNAT is
> certainly not an "academic exercise".  I don't know what an
> "industrial strength" compiler would necessarily mean, but our goal is
> to make it at least as reliable as GNU C.  Even in its present very
> preliminary state, it is being used for a significant "real" project:
> itself!  Most of the GNAT developers no longer use any Ada compiler
> other than GNAT.
> 
  [ a lot of good news deleted ]

This is the best news I read for quite a long time in this group. I
think GNAT may be the means to stop all these useless language wars.

We are just in the process of making a decision on whether we can
use Ada for a project or not. If a stable version of GNAT would be
available in the near future that would help me a lot in our discussions.

My question is: When will GNAT be available in a stable version and
when will I be able to install it on a SiliconGraphics ? We have
GCC 2.4.5 and an Ada compiler running and I might also have access to
a SUN if cross compilation should be necessary. But I am not a GCC
expert. So, I would need a detailed description of what to do.

Thanks

Michael

************************************************************************
* Dipl.-Ing. Michael Paus | Phone: (+49) 711-121-1434                  *
* University of Stuttgart | FAX:   (+49) 711-634856                    *
* Forststrasse 86         | Email: paus@ifr.luftfahrt.uni-stuttgart.de *
* 70176 Stuttgart, FRG    |        (NeXT-Mail welcome)                 *
************************************************************************

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[cis.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.ed]

Any idea when the version on /pub/gnat at cs.nyu.edu will be updated?

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Stefan Petersen]

>   In article <1993Sep18.163712.8933@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> blaak@csri.toron
to.edu (Raymond Blaak) writes:
>   >
>   >Ada 9X! Ada 9X! Ada 9X! The interest is off the scale.
>   >
>   >Cheers,
>   >Ray
>   >blaak@csri.toronto.edu
>   >
>   >P.S. The GNAT project may just be the best thing that has happened for Ada
.
>
>   Ok, we have one strong vote of interest. Any others? ;-)

You`d bet!!

Stefan Petersen (e92_spe@elixir.e.kth.se)

>   /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
>     Patrick M. Stickler  OH2LUV, KC4YYY    The comments contained herein
>     WSOY - Information Systems Division    do not necessarily reflect the
>     Helsinki, FINLAND    (psti@wsoy.fi)    official views of my employer.
>   /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Wes Groleau x1240 C73-8]

In article <27hagd$7qc@klaava.Helsinki.FI> stickler@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Patric 
M Stickler) writes:
>In article <1993Sep18.163712.8933@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> blaak@csri.toronto.
edu (Raymond Blaak) writes:
>>P.S. The GNAT project may just be the best thing that has happened for Ada.
>Ok, we have one strong vote of interest. Any others? ;-)

Some will say that GNAT may be the worst thing--because vendors, unable to
compete with "free" will drop out.  I disagree.  I suspect that "winning
converts" to Ada will help the vendors even if "competition" from GNAT 
undercuts them.  The reason is that many companies don't trust "free-ware"
and may buy commercial products once someone or something convinces them Ada
is not a joke.

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Barry Schiff]

>   In article <1993Sep18.163712.8933@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> blaak@csri.toron
to.edu (Raymond Blaak) writes:
>   >
>   >Ada 9X! Ada 9X! Ada 9X! The interest is off the scale.
>   >
>   >Cheers,
>   >Ray
>   >blaak@csri.toronto.edu
>   >
>   >P.S. The GNAT project may just be the best thing that has happened for Ada
.
>
>   Ok, we have one strong vote of interest. Any others? ;-)

Another YES YES YES vote for 9X and the GNAT project.

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Michael Feldman]

In article <CDnp46.M8C@News.MR.Net> info@xinotech.com (Brian Hanson) writes:
>Any idea when the version on /pub/gnat at cs.nyu.edu will be updated?

Very soon. NYU is here at Tri-Ada demonstrating the latest. They will
update their ftp server when they get home after the conference,
with both OS/2 and SPARC versions.

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5253 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
"We just changed our CONFIG.SYS, then pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL. It was easy."
-- Alexandre Giglavyi, director Lyceum of Information Technologies, Moscow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Michael Feldman]

In article <CDnp46.M8C@News.MR.Net> info@xinotech.com (Brian Hanson) writes:
>Any idea when the version on /pub/gnat at cs.nyu.edu will be updated?

Oops - I forgot - they will be at OOPSLA next week. I'd look for an
update on the NYU server in maybe 2 weeks.

Mike Feldman

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Michael Feldman]

In article <CDo3J0.CAG@crdnns.crd.ge.com> groleau@e7sa.crd.ge.com (Wes Groleau 
x1240 C73-8) writes:
>In article <27hagd$7qc@klaava.Helsinki.FI> stickler@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Patric
 M Stickler) writes:
>>In article <1993Sep18.163712.8933@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> blaak@csri.toronto
.edu (Raymond Blaak) writes:
>>>P.S. The GNAT project may just be the best thing that has happened for Ada.
>>Ok, we have one strong vote of interest. Any others? ;-)
>
>Some will say that GNAT may be the worst thing--because vendors, unable to
>compete with "free" will drop out.  I disagree.  I suspect that "winning
>converts" to Ada will help the vendors even if "competition" from GNAT 
>undercuts them.  The reason is that many companies don't trust "free-ware"
>and may buy commercial products once someone or something convinces them Ada
>is not a joke.

My discussions with vendor folks suggest that Wes is right. GNAT will
serve as exellent propaganda for Ada9X and will help the vendors by taking
some heat off them while they get it right for their desired customer
bases. Meanwhile, the rest of us can enjoy GNAT, and even hack on it
because we have the source code. I really believe GNAT is win/win/win.

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5253 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
"We just changed our CONFIG.SYS, then pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL. It was easy."
-- Alexandre Giglavyi, director Lyceum of Information Technologies, Moscow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[cis.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!hpscit.sc.hp.com!icon.r]

Can anybody offer an informed insight as to when platforms other than OS/2 and
SPARC are going to be supported by GNAT?  Namely, what I have in mind is
HP9000's series 800, 700 or 400.  From what I understand, cross-compilation
from one of the supported platforms, i.e. OS/2 or SPARC would be necessary to
achieve this.

Thomas "Yet Another Ada Addict - voting YAAA on GNAT :)" Vachuska
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tom@mothra.rose.hp.com                   (916)-785-4983  (Telnet & Voice Mail)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[cis.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!xlink.net!r]

In article <1993Sep22.033622.8401@seas.gwu.edu> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu  
(Michael Feldman) writes:
> In article <CDnp46.M8C@News.MR.Net> info@xinotech.com (Brian Hanson)  
writes:
> >Any idea when the version on /pub/gnat at cs.nyu.edu will be updated?
> 
> Oops - I forgot - they will be at OOPSLA next week. I'd look for an
> update on the NYU server in maybe 2 weeks.
> 
> Mike Feldman

If we still have to wait two more weeks, could anybody who knows
please tell us what we can expect to get. How complete is GNAT already ?
How does it perform ? ... Not everybody has the time (and money) to
go to TRI-Ada or OOPSLA, but we also want to know what's going on.

Michael

************************************************************************
* Dipl.-Ing. Michael Paus | Phone: (+49) 711-121-1434                  *
* University of Stuttgart | FAX:   (+49) 711-634856                    *
* Forststrasse 86         | Email: paus@ifr.luftfahrt.uni-stuttgart.de *
* 70176 Stuttgart, FRG    |        (NeXT-Mail welcome)                 *
************************************************************************

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Richard Kenner]

In article <27oniq$khn@hpchase.rose.hp.com> tom@hpncmo.rose.hp.com (Thomas Vach
uska) writes:
>Can anybody offer an informed insight as to when platforms other than OS/2 and
>SPARC are going to be supported by GNAT?  Namely, what I have in mind is
>HP9000's series 800, 700 or 400.  From what I understand, cross-compilation
>from one of the supported platforms, i.e. OS/2 or SPARC would be necessary to
>achieve this.

Since this keeps coming up, let me try to summarize the situation.

GNAT is a front-end to GCC, the GNU C compiler.  As such, it can
generate code for all targets supported by GCC, which is essentially
all commonly-used processors and systems other than the Cray,
Transputer, and KSR.

The intention is to distribute GNAT releases (this is a good time to
remind people that what is available now is NOT YET a release; merely
a "snapshot" of the current state of development of a project of wide
interest) the same way as GCC: primarily in source form, with binaries
for a very few configurations.

In order to compile GCC you need a C compiler.  Since most systems
include a C compiler, there is no need to distribute GCC binaries.
For those systems on which a C compiler is often not available (VMS,
Solaris 2.0, and some of the PC systems), binaries of GCC are
available at various locations.  However, providing binaries for the
150 or so configurations that support GCC (and hence GNAT) is
impractical.

The situation for building GNAT is currently made difficult by the
fact that the only compiler capable of compiling it is itself due to
the way C and Ada are intermixed.

We hope, at some point, to provide some sort of bootstrap tools to
allow GNAT to be built with just a C compiler, probably via a
multi-step process.  Although we would like to do this, it is
important to point out that we are not committed to doing it and we do
not know when such tools might be available, precisely how they will
work, or what auxiliary files may need to be added to the distribution
to support the bootstrap process.

In the meantime, therefore, the only way to build GNAT is via a
cross-compiler from some machine on which a binary is available.  From
NYU, that's Sparc and OS/2 (I would not recommend trying to
cross-compile from OS/2, though).  However, we know that other folks
have binaries, though possibly dated, for other machines.

Doing this cross-compilation is a very straightforward process.
However, in order to do it, you need to be very familiar with general
cross-compilation issues and know how to build GCC cross-compilers.

To make it easier, we are adding the following to Makefile.in in our
next snapshot:

    gnat-cross: force
	make $(ADA_ADA_OBJS) CC="gcc -Bstage1/" CFLAGS="-S"

Although we encourage people who feel comfortable with the process to
build GNAT for other systems, we do not have the resources to assist
people who do not understand the procedure.  If you understand how to
do it but something doesn't work when you try it, we'd like to know
about it, but it's not likely we'll be able to respond in any way, at
least in the short term.  We do know that if you want to build GNAT on
a HP PA-RISC system, you need to specify -mdisable-indexing when you
build the C parts of GNAT.

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Jim Crigler]

Wes Groleau x1240 C73-8 (groleau@e7sa.crd.ge.com) wrote:
: In article <27hagd$7qc@klaava.Helsinki.FI> stickler@klaava.Helsinki.FI
: (Patric M Stickler) writes:
:
: : In article <1993Sep18.163712.8933@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
: : blaak@csri.toronto.edu (Raymond Blaak) writes:
: :
: : : P.S. The GNAT project may just be the best thing that has happened
: : : for Ada.
: :
: : Ok, we have one strong vote of interest. Any others? ;-)

: Some will say that GNAT may be the worst thing--because vendors,
: unable to compete with "free" will drop out. I disagree. I suspect
: that "winning converts" to Ada will help the vendors even if
: "competition" from GNAT undercuts them. The reason is that many
: companies don't trust "free-ware" and may buy commercial products
: once someone or something convinces them Ada is not a joke.

There's also the FSF's licensing agreement, which some (myself NOT
included) take objection to.

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Michael Feldman]

In article <27oniq$khn@hpchase.rose.hp.com>,
Thomas Vachuska <tom@hpncmo.rose.hp.com> wrote:
>Can anybody offer an informed insight as to when platforms other than OS/2 and
>SPARC are going to be supported by GNAT?  Namely, what I have in mind is
>HP9000's series 800, 700 or 400.  From what I understand, cross-compilation
>from one of the supported platforms, i.e. OS/2 or SPARC would be necessary to
>achieve this.
>
Correct. NYU is _committed_ only to OS/2 and Sun SPARC. Given the reported
ease of moving it to Linux, as reported a while back here, "normal" ports
shouldn't be too hard using gcc cross-compilation.

NYU has advised not doing too many ports till the system is really stable,
but one can always try.

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5253 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
"We just changed our CONFIG.SYS, then pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL. It was easy."
-- Alexandre Giglavyi, director Lyceum of Information Technologies, Moscow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Michael Feldman]

In article <1993Sep22.173727.5705@iplmail.orl.mmc.com>,

>There's also the FSF's licensing agreement, which some (myself NOT
>included) take objection to.

Well, they are under no obligation to use GNAT. They can buy the
commercial compilers. Meanwhile, the rest of us can have fun.

Mike Feldman

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!uknet!yorkohm!minster!ken]

Michael Feldman (mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu) wrote:
: In article <CDo3J0.CAG@crdnns.crd.ge.com> groleau@e7sa.crd.ge.com (Wes Grolea
u x1240 C73-8) writes:
: >In article <27hagd$7qc@klaava.Helsinki.FI> stickler@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Patr
ic M Stickler) writes:
: >>In article <1993Sep18.163712.8933@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> blaak@csri.toron
to.edu (Raymond Blaak) writes:
: >>>P.S. The GNAT project may just be the best thing that has happened for Ada
.
: >>Ok, we have one strong vote of interest. Any others? ;-)
: >
: >Some will say that GNAT may be the worst thing--because vendors, unable to
: >compete with "free" will drop out.  I disagree.  I suspect that "winning
: >converts" to Ada will help the vendors even if "competition" from GNAT 
: >undercuts them.  The reason is that many companies don't trust "free-ware"
: >and may buy commercial products once someone or something convinces them Ada
: >is not a joke.

: My discussions with vendor folks suggest that Wes is right. GNAT will
: serve as exellent propaganda for Ada9X and will help the vendors by taking
: some heat off them while they get it right for their desired customer
: bases. Meanwhile, the rest of us can enjoy GNAT, and even hack on it
: because we have the source code. I really believe GNAT is win/win/win.

I agree totally. Besides, vendors can concentrate on programming environment
tools: something lacking in most compiler implementations. I played with the
Rational environment back in '87 and it was wonderful. This was in the days
before windowing interfaces, so there is even more potential for the
production of a decent development environment running on top of GNAT.


--
Ken Tindell             Internet      : ken@minster.york.ac.uk
Computer Science Dept., Local FTP site: minster.york.ac.uk
University of York,     Tel.          : +44-904-433244         
YO1 5DD, UK             Fax.          : +44-904-432708
--
"The Gulf War won't be like a Rambo film; it will be long, bloody and terrible"

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Gary Morris @ignite]

In <CDo3J0.CAG@crdnns.crd.ge.com> groleau@e7sa.crd.ge.com (Wes Groleau) writes:
>>In article <1993Sep18.163712.8933@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> blaak@csri.toronto
.edu (Raymond Blaak) writes:
>>>P.S. The GNAT project may just be the best thing that has happened for Ada.
>...I suspect that "winning
>converts" to Ada will help the vendors even if "competition" from GNAT 
>undercuts them.  The reason is that many companies don't trust "free-ware"
>and may buy commercial products once someone or something convinces them Ada
>is not a joke.

Also, some companies using Ada are required by contract or DOD to use a
validated compiler.  I haven't heard if anyone will be validating GNAT.
If it is not validated than those companies that need a validated compiler
will still be buying commercial products.
--GaryM
-- 
Gary Morris                      Internet: garym@alsys.com
TeleUSE/Ada Development          UUCP:     uunet!alsys.com!garym
Alsys Inc. (TeleSoft)            Phone:    +1 619-457-2700 x128
San Diego, CA, USA               Fax:      +1 619-452-1334

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Richard Kenner]

In article <CDtsy4.4nz@alsys.com> garym@alsys.com (Gary Morris @ignite) writes:
>Also, some companies using Ada are required by contract or DOD to use a
>validated compiler.  I haven't heard if anyone will be validating GNAT.
>If it is not validated than those companies that need a validated compiler
>will still be buying commercial products.

NYU's original Ada/Ed compiler was validated, and, in fact, received
validation certificate number one.

GNAT is an Ada 9X compiler, not Ada 83.  We supply an "Ada83" switch,
but it does not always preserve Ada 83 semantics so we do not expect
GNAT to be validatable as an Ada 83 compiler and feel it is not
worthwhile trying that exercise.

As far as validating it as an Ada 9X compiler is concerned, as you
know there is currently no Ada 9X validation suite and it is not
expected that there will be one by the expiration of NYU's current
contract to produce GNAT.  Therefore validation is not part of the
current GNAT effort.

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[cis.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!linus]

I had the pleasure of trying out GNAT for a PC running OS/2 2.1 at Tri-Ada 93.
Thanks very much to Robert, Ed, Chris, and the others for the opportunity.
A lab at Tri-Ada was an excellent idea.

I worked with the Ada 9X demo program they provided and modified it, adding
my own package.  Just a hundred lines of code or so.

Some data (for what it's worth ... realize that 1 100+ line program is just
the beginning of an experience):

  Compile time/file (20-80 SLOC, counting only <CR>s): 5-15 seconds at 55MHz
(486), up to 30 seconds at 20MHz
  Bind time (system): 20 or 35 seconds (55MHz or 20MHz)
  Executable size: 49K (!!!!!)
  Execution time of EXE file: <1 second

Overall, I was quite pleased.  Definitely tolerable, and it's 9X!

Rick

Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?

[Richard Conn]

In article <23c9ac4e@p42.f9.n242.z2.fidonet.org>, Till_Koerner@freax.fido.de (T
ill Koerner) writes:
|> 
|> RC> I had the pleasure of trying out GNAT for a PC running OS/2 2.1 at Tri-A
da
|> RC> 93. Thanks very much to Robert, Ed, Chris, and the others for the
|> RC> opportunity. A lab at Tri-Ada was an excellent idea. [...]
|> 
|> RC> Overall, I was quite pleased.  Definitely tolerable, and it's 9X!
|> 
|> RC> Rick
|> 
|> Hi, Rick!
|> 
|> I am interested in the OS/2 port of GNAT. Do you know of any anonymous-ftp s
ite
|> where I could get a 'ready-to-install' version? I found a site with
|> gnat-3.01.tar.gzip but haven't got a connection yet. Does that archive conta
in
|> sources 'only' or are any pre-compiled versions included?
|> 
|> Thanks in advance
|> 
|> Till Koerner

Till,

I'll put it in the PAL this week.  Ed gave me a copy on floppy of the
OS/2 ready-to-run version.

Rick