Re: Ada on Apple's new procesors

[Optikos <ZUERCHER_Andreas@outlook.com>]

On Tuesday, June 30, 2020 at 5:40:13 PM UTC-5, Simon Wright wrote:
> Optikos writes:
> 
> > By that point, there should be a strong track record of technical
> > knowledge regarding Apple's bitcode submission policies to the App
> > Store to relay to the attorneys so that they can simply turn the legal
> > crank to make a decision/adjustments of whether/how GNAT-LLVM is to
> > transition out of experimental status.
> 
> I'd have thought that AdaCore's response to this idea would be to ask
> where you got the idea that iOS & the App Store would feature as a
> candidate target.

Gee, either
a) we all concurrently pulled it out of thin air via overactive imagination as you imply,
or
b) the following extant events & facts transpired:

At least an engineer at AdaCore (if not AdaCore speaking as an organization) wrote the following on the GNAT-LLVM repository's README.md:

“[GNAT-LLVM] is a work-in-progress research project that's not meant for and shouldn't be used for industrial purposes. It's meant to show the feasibility of generating LLVM ••bitcode•• for Ada.” (emphasis added)

LLVM.org did not organically produce bitcode out of their own volition.  Bitcode was Apple's idea, Apple's design, contributed by Apple to benefit primarily Apple as a strategic technology to facilitate Apple's OS-optimization & processor-switcheroo goals without Apple begging all app developers to resubmit a plethora of minor-variation apps every time Apple has a bright idea or Big New Thing.  So when GNAT-LLVM's README.md is explicitly calling out bitcode emission as the A#1 top-priority reason for GNAT-LLVM to exist, by using that very term bitcode, it is quite clear that the intended reading of README.md is referring to the Apple-Apple-Appleness of bitcode since bitcode was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in June 2015 as a key technology related to App Store submission and downstream proprietary processing by Apple post-submission:

https://TheNextWeb.com/apple/2015/06/17/apples-biggest-developer-news-at-wwdc-that-nobodys-talking-about-bitcode