From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.8 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00,PLING_QUERY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.swapon.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Niklas Holsti Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Adapting an Ada compiler to generate 8051 code (Again?! ;-) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2021 18:07:34 +0300 Organization: Tidorum Ltd Message-ID: References: <41bc7a62-9c70-466d-b316-5fc74a3ee845n@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net 8CWVGvWlS9sGWR69CN97fwbiiHviVuy/JhZiex6UW7zqfcs/iT Cancel-Lock: sha1:s4DLJHmdCJ4plmpEcldjbBKLM3I= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.14; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.7.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Language: en-US Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:61721 List-Id: On 2021-04-01 2:14, Randy Brukardt wrote: > "Niklas Holsti" wrote in message > news:icgdhjF3j1eU1@mid.individual.net... > ... >> I have often wished that there would be Ada compilers for more >> microcontrollers, but I understand why there aren't. An Ada-to-C compiler >> seems the most promising route. > > Send $$$. ;-) This was a project that was ideally suited for the > Janus/Ada compiler suite, but we never were able to find a customer > for it. The problem is always that the first customer has to pay a > substantial part of the development; later customers don't have to > pay that freight. (Back in the "waiver" days we considered doing it > for the "fun" of making DoD-types have to find better excuses to > avoid Ada than a compiler not existing for it, but the likely ROI > wasn't there to convince the angel investors to go along with the > idea.) Yes, things like that were among the reasons I had in mind for the lack of such Ada compilers. Plus the fact that the pain of writing a small C program is much less than the pain of writing a large C program. If you think that targeting Janus/Ada to small microcontrollers is practical, I have two questions for you: Can you describe, in general, the Janus/Ada internal program representation that, say, an 8051-back-end would get as input? Would you be open to external/community participation in creating new back ends for Janus/Ada, either under NDA or working from a public definition of the internal representation, and either work-for-free or work for some share of future sales? -- Niklas Holsti Tidorum Ltd