Re: GNAT for Windows NT

[labtek@cs.yale.edu (Tom Griest)]

In article <37mchr$oo8@server.cs.vt.edu> wentz@actor.cs.vt.edu (Brian Wentz) writes:
>  Does anyone have GNAT ported to NT, or in the midst of working
>  on it?  I was going to start on it, but don't want to
>  waste my time if someone else has done it.  Let me know, thanks!
>

Yes.  LabTek ported GNAT to NT some time ago, but we only told
folks in the MS-Windows WG in SigAda and a few others, like NYU
and the Ada9X project office.  I guess we shouldn't keep it quiet
any longer.

You can get Gnat/NT from ftp.cs.yale.edu in pub/gnat.

The version that is there is 1.81, however we expect to upload
1.83 tonight.  We wanted to test it under the final release
(build 807) of WinNT-3.5 and now that has completed.

LabTek has added a WinHelp file for gcc/gnat that provides
hypertext help and full word index of all the options and switches.

We have also added a special "Convention" for the Import and
Convention pragmas that allow you to call Win32 API calls
directly.  Along with that, there are special versions of
gnatb and gnatbl that provide the proper WinMain stuff you
need for doing real "windows" work.  Also, you should be aware 
that there is a funded effort to provide a public "thin Ada binding" 
to Win32, and there is also work going on with thicker bindings.
Although I can't give you a hard date on these bindings, they
are probably less than 4 months away.  LabTek has partial
"preliminary" bindings that we developed for windef, winnt, 
winuser, winbase, and wingdi that we have been using and can 
probably get you if you're in a crunch.

So before you go off and re-invent the wheel, check with me and
I can let you know where things stand.

Tom Griest
LabTek Corporation