Re: Developing on a Mac

[Jerry <list_email@icloud.com>]

On Wednesday, October 14, 2020 at 9:40:00 AM UTC-7, wrote:
> I searched but could not find. 
> How to develop Ada programs on a Mac today (Catalina)? 
> GNAT CE 2020 for Mac has no GPS anymore. 
> Must one use Xcode? 
> How make Xcode Ada-aware and integrate it with GNAT? 
> Some other Ada-aware IDE for Mac? 
> Thanks a lot.

Some of the following is kind of vague but I hope it is useful. Many listers will know much more.

One time a long time ago someone (on this list?) made Xcode work with Ada. It was fantastic. Even a debugger IIRC. But apparently Apple likes to change the underpinnings and after some time Xcode ceased to work with Ada. (There also is or was a FPC Pascal way with Xcode that was even more capable but I haven't checked into that for a long time.)

There also used to be Carbon bindings to Ada, possibly made by the same person. (The words "Blady" and "Pascal" come to mind for this person.) They were on the macada.org web site which doesn't seem to do much these days, as well as being linked from AdaPower. Of course the Carbon API has been long-deprecated but I'm sure it is still used. (How does Microsoft keep Word et al working on Macs?)

It's not a full IDE in some opinions but Visual Studio Code runs on Macs, even my now-ancient 2008 PowerBook and macOS 10.11.6. There is an Ada plug-in but make sure you get the right one. I think this plug-in might be supported by AdaCore. And there's something about an Ada Language Server. I don't really understand all of this. I've tried to get this running but the instructions are minimal so it is taking more effort than it should. (Why are installation instructions so frequently written assuming that you already know how to install stuff?)

IntelliJ IDEA CE also has an Ada plug-in.

I guess Eclipse has an Ada plug-in as well. I think AdaCore supports this but I'm not sure if the Mac version is well-supported.

None of the above except Xcode is a native Mac app so you'll have to deal with a certain amount of cross-platform-turdism. I would happily pay hundreds of $US for a native Mac Ada IDE but that will never happen. The previously-mentioned Xcode hack was close enough, though.

There are lots of text editors that aren't too bad. I have used Textmate with its Ada plug-in (bundle) which I've modified for my own purposes for many years. Not an IDE but it does have the capability to link from parsed error reports back to your code. Textmate was a leader in this area and its bundle architecture has been used by several other editors.

Sorry if this is all a little sketchy.

Now for something OT. If you are doing technical work in Ada and want to store or examine or plot results, I have made Igor Pro (wavemetrics.com) work with Ada. This is a fantastic arrangement. It's almost as nimble as working in a notebook (think Jupyter or Jupyter Lab) but you get the awesomeness of Igor Pro to plot, post-process, and document. 

Jerry