Re: Ada: A beginners experience

[Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com>]

> Just following along blindly
> came up with various errors like that it needed system.ads.
[...]

OK, I see where this comes from. Indeed, it might be the case that the native compiler on Raspberry has the language details set up fortunately enough that such manipulations are not necessary - while cross-compilers on other systems can use different setups and cause troubles. Indeed, this is a valuable note to take.
You might find it interesting that the whole tutorial was created from experiments that involved analysis of the resulting assembly output. As long as the assembly was as expected for the target microcontroller, the narrative and examples evolved. It might not be easy to adopt, but I'm prone to conclude that this step is part of the game and perhaps it could also help discover some of the cross-compilation issues earlier.

> A new 
> beginner is not going to immediately link this to not having and RTS.

Right.

> Like I said, it was good.  I just wanted the OP to understand that 
> while it mentions cross-compile, just blinding following the steps
> and replacing the commands with the cross compile ones doesn't work.

Good point, thank you. Note also that even with the compiler on Raspberry, there is no guarantee that all examples will work forever - new compiler versions might introduce some minor differences here and there. I have noticed myself some new ABI calls where they weren't needed, after upgrading the compiler. Yes, embedded systems is a hobby for tinkerers. :-)

> package body Program is
> 
>    X : Integer := 123; -- This actually worked correctly for me

Interesting! I cannot explain that without analyzing the assembly and the linker script, but I can imagine it being the case.

> I really think your book is great, so please don't take any comments
> as antagonistic.  I recommend it to anyone I see getting started in
> micro-controller development.

Thank you for the good comments.

-- 
Maciej Sobczak * http://www.inspirel.com