Verdix VADS ADA or GNU ADA on an SGI...

Verdix VADS ADA or GNU ADA on an SGI...

[martin connor]

We are in the process of selecting an ADA compiler for an SGI workstation.
The engineers want VERIX VADS, the accountants want GNU ADA (based on cost).
Has anyone used either of these on an SGI workstation?  Does GNU ADA have
tools, or support?  In the long run would the VERDIX ADA be a better choice?

                                        Thanks in advance,

                                        Martin Connor

                                        connor@dseg.ti.com
  :w
        

Re: Verdix VADS ADA or GNU ADA on an SGI...

[Robert I. Eachus]

In article <1994Sep22.143838.388@mksol.dseg.ti.com> connor@mksol.dseg.ti.com (martin connor) writes:

 > We are in the process of selecting an ADA compiler for an SGI workstation.
 > The engineers want VERIX VADS, the accountants want GNU ADA (based on cost).
 > Has anyone used either of these on an SGI workstation?  Does GNU ADA have
 > tools, or support?  In the long run would the VERDIX ADA be a better choice?

    Choose whichever one costs your company less in the long run.
Robert Dewar is setting up an organization (ACT) to provide GNAT
support, or you can allocate an individual in your company to do it.
The amount of effort involved will vary based on number of systems,
number of users, and sophistication.  You may even end up needing more
than one support person.

     When comparing costs, don't forget that you will need some
in-house support for VADS.  However Rational has been willing to
provide this kind of support on their products, so you may want to
consider Rational Rose/Ada if it is available for your platform and
you don't want to do your own support.

      In general, expect GNAT to cost least for low usage levels, VADS
will probably win for low hassle moderate usage, and suitability for
your needs will dominate support costs at the high-end.  i.e. Do
bindings exist to the database you want to use?  Does the compiler
support interfacing to the C compiler you want?  Extend the list at
will...

--

					Robert I. Eachus

with Standard_Disclaimer;
use  Standard_Disclaimer;
function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...

Re: Verdix VADS ADA or GNU ADA on an SGI...

[Ted Dennison]

In article <1994Sep22.143838.388@mksol.dseg.ti.com>, connor@mksol.dseg.ti.com (martin connor) writes:
|> We are in the process of selecting an ADA compiler for an SGI workstation.
|> The engineers want VERIX VADS, the accountants want GNU ADA (based on cost).
|> Has anyone used either of these on an SGI workstation?  Does GNU ADA have
|> tools, or support?  In the long run would the VERDIX ADA be a better choice?
|> 
|>                                         Thanks in advance,
|> 
|>                                         Martin Connor
|> 
|>                                         connor@dseg.ti.com

GNU Ada (I assume you are talking about Ada, not ADA) is still under development.
It is missing several critical features (including tasking on non-Suns). I would
consider use of GNU Ada a very "high-risk" choice (to use manager lingo). If you
can purchase the commercial product, there is no sense taking the risk. If not,
download GNAT and check the feature list CAREFULLY to make sure that everything
you need to do is supported.

That being said, I have used GNAT on one project already, and it worked quite
well. I had to work around several bugs, and I had to write my own version of
Sequential_IO, but none of the problems were insurmountable.

T.E.D.
dennison@romulus.orl.mmc.com

Re: Verdix VADS ADA or GNU ADA on an SGI...

[Robert Dewar]

Ted is basically accurate in his assessment of GNAT (I am pleased to hear
that he has managed to gte it to work for him). Just one amendment is that
the tasking is available on some other platforms besides Suns, and in 
particular, the tasking will be available on several other machines including
the SGI very shortly.

An important factor in risk mitigation with using early versions of GNAT is
indeed to be careful about what features you use. GNAT itself has been using
nothing but GNAT to compile itself for over 15 months, and we have found
it to be a VERY reliable compiler, but we certainly don't use some of the
more difficult aspects of Ada (complex private types, aggregates, complex
variant records etc), which helps to account for our good experience.

It's certainly early to be using GNAT for mission critical stuff, but a
number of projects have done, and are doing so successfully already, and
each new version of GNAT improves the stability and completeness
substantially (keep those bug reports coming in!)
 

Re: Verdix VADS ADA or GNU ADA on an SGI...

[Robert Dewar]

Martin Connor's question seems a good opportunity to make an informal
announcement that SGI has signed a contract with Ada Core Technologies
that provides for validation and full product-level documentation for
GNAT on SGI workstations. SGI is currently integrating GNAT into its
high level toolset, and GNAT will be fully supported in this environment.

A note to Martin's accountants. This may seem surprising coming from me,
but I think it is a big mistake to base your selection of Ada technology
on cost alone. I would much prefer that you select GNAT only if it makes
technical sense. For example, if you need to deliver a mission critical
application using a validated Ada 83 compiler in the very near future, then
it is hard for me to believe that GNAT is the sensible choice. If on the
other hand your needs are more flexible, and Ada 9X support is important
then it's worth doing a careful evaluation of GNAT.

Also, be careful to fully evaluate costs. Sure you can get a copy of
GNAT for $0, but that doesn't represent the full costs of using fully
supported software with appropriate tools.

It is important to compare apples with apples here. In particular, it would
be very misleading to compare the cost of acquisition of an unsupported
version of GNAT with the acquisition of fully supported proprietary software.
Remember the Cygnus slogan (they are the company that supports GCC): "we
make free software affordable".

It would be too bad if people inappropriately selected GNAT based on
misleading and incompletely cost issues alone. That won't do anyone
any good.

Re: Verdix VADS ADA or GNU ADA on an SGI...

[James Hopper]

In article <1994Sep22.143838.388@mksol.dseg.ti.com> martin connor,
connor@mksol.dseg.ti.com writes:
>We are in the process of selecting an ADA compiler for an SGI
workstation.
>The engineers want VERIX VADS, the accountants want GNU ADA (based on
cost).
>Has anyone used either of these on an SGI workstation?  Does GNU ADA have
>tools, or support?  In the long run would the VERDIX ADA be a better
choice?
>
\x05Martin,

I havent managed to get gnat to run on our sgi as we have had diskspace
problems, but i use the sgi mp ada a lot.  there are a lot of bindings
to sgi libraries like gl, react ect that have to be added to a compiler
to make it useful on the sgi.  you might want to find out if such 
bindings exist for gnat. Its not impossible to write your own i have
done this for some sgi libraries not currently supported by mp ada
such as asynch io, its just time consuming.

best jim

Re: Verdix VADS ADA or GNU ADA on an SGI...

[Matthew C. Sargent]

In article <366vb4$gbr@dayuc.dayton.saic.com>, James Hopper
<hopperj@dayton.saic.com> wrote:

> In article <1994Sep22.143838.388@mksol.dseg.ti.com> martin connor,
> connor@mksol.dseg.ti.com writes:
> >We are in the process of selecting an ADA compiler for an SGI
> workstation.
> >The engineers want VERIX VADS, the accountants want GNU ADA (based on
> cost).

That's Rational Software Corporation VADS compiler. The VADS on the SGI
includes flavors that allow you to map threads on the SGI to Ada tasks.
Check it out, I don't think you would be sorry.

> >Has anyone used either of these on an SGI workstation?  Does GNU ADA have
> >tools, or support?  In the long run would the VERDIX ADA be a better
> choice?
> [comments snipped...]

-- 
Matthew C. Sargent                | Their MY opinions. MINE! Nobody
Rational Software Corporation     | elses! You can't keep them. Give
sarge@Rational.com                | them BACK. Waaaaaaaaaaa! I want
804-491-0372                      | my opinons BACK. Mommmmmmmmy!
804-425-5859 Fax                  |

Re: Verdix VADS ADA or GNU ADA on an SGI...

[Fred McCall]

In <1994Sep22.143838.388@mksol.dseg.ti.com> connor@mksol.dseg.ti.com martin connor writes:

>We are in the process of selecting an ADA compiler for an SGI workstation.
>The engineers want VERIX VADS, the accountants want GNU ADA (based on cost).
>Has anyone used either of these on an SGI workstation?  Does GNU ADA have
>tools, or support?  In the long run would the VERDIX ADA be a better choice?

In DSEG you don't really have the option of using GNAT.  If you're
working on something where you have to use Ada (which is, I presume, why
you're using it if your beancounters are that concerned about compiler
costs) you're going to have to use a validated compiler.

I also don't recall hearing that it had been ported to SGI IRIX (last I
knew, GCC wouldn't build correctly, but that was a year ago so things
have probably changed somewhat in that regard).

If you're writing MCCR software (or probably anything that falls into
deliverable software, for that matter), you have to use a validated
compiler suite.  You also won't be able to get any support from SGI for
any problems you may have (and, using an unsupported compiler, you're
going to run into lots of problems where your support for GNAT will say
it's an IRIX bug and SGI will tell you that you're using an unsupported
compiler so it's your problem).

[Can you say 'captive market'?  Even given access to free tools, it
still exists as long as we have to deal with the Ada Mandate.]

--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
merlin@annwfn.com -- I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

Re: Verdix VADS ADA or GNU ADA on an SGI...

[Robert Dewar]

Fred, not only has GNAT been ported to Irix, but SGI has signed a contract
with ACT under which GNAT will be validated under ACVC 2.0 early next year.

Re: Verdix VADS ADA or GNU ADA on an SGI...

[Robert Dewar]

I am a bit hesitant to respond further in too much detail to Fred's note,
since it seems like it could be interpreted as advertising. But since there
is clear false information there, it seems like it should be corrected. Fred
assumes that he can fall in the gap between SGI support and GNAT support.
That's a real concern, and is why the ACT approach is to work cooperatively
with SGI. SGI will provide front line support, and then as needed ACT will
provide support (to SGI, and via them to SGI customers as needed) for the
central GNAT technology. We believe that this is the most viable approach
for support of GNAT from a customers point of view. Of course, large
customers can also talk to us directly if they feel they need direct ACT
support. There is quite a bit more to be said, but as I noted earlier, I
don't like to use CLA for advertising. For more information, contact me
as president of ACT, or Wes Embry, the manager of the Ada/GNAT project
at SGI.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Re: Verdix VADS ADA or GNU ADA on an SGI...

[Dave McAllister]

In article <36u3kq$roc@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>, dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
...

|> For more information, contact me
|> as president of ACT, or Wes Embry, the manager of the Ada/GNAT project
|> at SGI.
|> 
|> Robert Dewar
|> Ada Core Technologies
|> 


Or me, Dave McAllister, Product Manager for Ada 
or Stuart Liroff, Engineering Manager for Ada
or Wes Embry, Principal Ada Architect
or....

Dave McAllister
-- 
Product Manager, Compilers
Silicon Graphics, Inc

*SHINDO - the ART of the MIND*

*Fortune for the day*