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=-0.3 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.szaf.org!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: VMS Ada Alliance Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Ada is back on VMS Date: Mon, 3 May 2021 17:42:26 +0200 Message-ID: Reply-To: contact@vsmadaall.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net eNBwm371hRDQnz9bjzbwzwi6xwQwoD2DMyxD5lfv8P4kDTjZ29 Cancel-Lock: sha1:JIfRfVSeHG8ydej9q5hat3S9hOo= X-Mozilla-News-Host: news://net.xxx.fr:119 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.10.0 Content-Language: fr X-Antivirus: Avast (VPS 210502-8, 02/05/2021), Outbound message X-Antivirus-Status: Clean Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:61946 List-Id: Hello, For whom the information is unknown, VMS itself is back since 2014. The company VSI (VMS Software Inc. Vmssoftware.com) negociated with HP to give it support and future. Since this decision, VSI gives a quality support to VMS on Alpha and Itanium hardware, and now the port to x86 and virtualization is about to be completed. Restricted Early Adopter Kits can be obtained, which run on Oracle Virtual Boxes or vmware. A full field test will begin in June, and the production release will be here at the end of this year. For us, more important, the information is that Ada is back on VMS. It had been always available on Alpha (and VAX) as DEC Ada, and is still there. It had been on Itanium until end 2014, as a GNAT Ada gcc implementation, supported by Adacore. Adacore ended its support at the end of 2014, and we organized a rebuild from FSF sources, with the help of David Sauvage, AdaLabs. This build is presented here (https://github.com/AdaLabs/gnat-vms). On our side we can provide the binaries for users who can garanty they have a professionnel or hobbyist licence for VMS (*) (the build uses VMS headers). (have a look here : http://www.vmsadaall.org/index.php/en/). The pia-sofer company (Play It Again SOFtwarE Renew, piasofer.fr) offers support for the package. The novelty is that we can think now of a future of Ada on VMS, on x86. VSI organized its set of compilers using LLVM as the back end, version 10. And there is on github a prototype of a GNAT Ada front end for LLVM. So, we have just to test how make them interact. It’s not a trivial project, but truly exciting. We are just at the beginning of this work, and we’ll inform on this group how we are progressing. For sure everyone is invited to participate. It’s a little bit difficult to get an Itanium, where you could test our build. Some itaniums are available via users club initiatives (not yet in france, but the users club vmsgenerations has a project on that). It’s more easy to get a free Alpha emulator (for example here : http://www.migrationspecialties.com/FreeAXP.html). And you can get a hobbyist licence by VSI for both (https://vmssoftware.com/community/community-license). Important, we do think, to remember all the VMSisms before getting in the project. To test the Gnat Ada front end on Linux is straitforward, and it is also a preliminary work before porting on VMS (https://github.com/AdaCore/gnat-llvm). We don’t know when VSI will offer hobbyist licenses on VMS x86. Everyone who is thrilled to test some VMS x86 (and on Ada compiler) can contact us, and we’ll organize vpn accesses (contact@vmsadaall.org). Our particular effort is about universality. We think it’s very important to address the cultural continuity of Ada on VMS from VAX to x86. There are a lot of good things written for Ada on VMS we have to reuse (for example for debug). And because the more modern solutions are around Adacore solutions, it is important to understand similarities and differencies between the GNAT Ada on gcc and the Gnat Ada on LLVM. It’s a community effort. We hope VSI and/or Adacore will involve in the return of Ada on VMS. And we know there are always been a good collaboration between Adacore and communities. But companies have their constraints, while individuals or Open Source structures can be immediately reactive. Perhaps also it is a sort of garanty for users when a community is there. Don’t hesitate to contact us : contact@vmsadaall.org (*) It is a full fledjed 4.3.7 version, with all its gnat tools. And we give in the same package the gcc c compiler and the gcc c++ compiler (of that version). We are working on the libstdc++-v3 (also here, every help welcomed, including just testing).