Re: Ada on Apple's new procesors

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

Optikos <ZUERCHER_Andreas@outlook.com> writes:

> On Wednesday, June 24, 2020 at 11:35:09 AM UTC-5, Simon Wright wrote:
>> "Luke A. Guest" writes:
>> 
>> > My options are:
>> >
>> > 1) Write and Ada compiler.
>> > 2) Develop my own language without Ada or GNAT's baggage.
>> > 3) Find another language.
>> 
>> Isn't there an option 0, carry on using GCC?
>
> Yes, option 0 would support only Apple's Intel-based products (and
> perhaps still support PowerPC-based defunct products), not the new
> ARM-based Mac, which is the entire point of OP.  Without GNAT-LLVM, no
> Ada compiler from any vendor on the new ARM-based Mac nor on
> iOS/iPadOS devices.  So that is why 2 prior authors omitted option 0:
> because it is effectively a degenerate inferior
> not-quite-a-full-option.

Thanks for rubbing my nose in this, you really didn't need to do that
since Luke has had a good go already (sorry, Luke, I'd forgotten that
other Ada users might want to develop for iOS - something they can't do
at the moment ofc, and who knows whether there'll be an apple-arm-darwin
GCC in the future)

>> As a side note, the README.md in gnat-llvm says "This 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 and to open the LLVM ecosystem to Ada,
>> including tools such as KLEE."
>
> It is because of this warning, that I cannot place much trust in
> AdaCore firmly disclaiming the legal matter of generated executables
> or DLLs (that link to the runtime) ending up pure GPLed under some
> usages of LLVM opt, especially certain plug-ins, plus perhaps some
> other complicating Compilation Process that violates a subtle
> obligatory term in meeting the stricter Elligibile Compilation Process
> in the RLE.

You don't half go in for conspiracy theories! I don't think you can have
actually read that note in order to draw that conclusion from it.