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From: nobody in particular <nobody@devnull.org>
Subject: Re: Ada on OpenVMS, where to have a new beginning
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2020 18:49:13 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <rhh7rb$r05$1@dont-email.me> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <hpvs79Fll85U1@mid.individual.net>

It is unlikely yet perhaps Steve Lionel will have some info on this. 
Although he was not involved with Ada (to my knowledge) he was a fixture 
in the compiler community for Fortran and probably more, at DEC, COMPAQ, 
and HP over a long period and might be able to identify likely suspects 
to contact.

This year the VMS port to Intel X86 was finally completed

https://vmssoftware.com/updates/state-of-the-port/

https://sciinc.com/remotevms/vms_techinfo/vms_news/OpenVMSOnX86-64.asp

I remember a lengthy discussion in the VMS newsgroup many years ago 
regarding the future of Ada on VMS. I believe the guys at the above 
companies were involved. I think the conclusion was they would not or 
could not handle it in-house and I believe the Ada they had on VMS was 
only 95. There were murmurings that they would try to find somebody to 
do it but I did not hear that Adacore ever released anything.

Thank you, I'll follow this thread with interest.


On 17/08/2020 17:14, gérard Calliet wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I participated in a GNAT Ada build for Itanium OpenVMS 
> (https://github.com/AdaLabs/gnat-vms) a few years ago. It is based on a 
> GCC 4.7.3 .
> 
> I'm coming back to this work to maintain it and make it evolve, in a 
> general approach of making Ada available in OpenVMS environments (VAX, 
> Alpha, Itanium, and soon x86). (http://www.vmsadaall.org/index.php/en/)
> 
> For VAX and Alpha we have at least DEC Ada and Alsys Ada.  On Itanium I 
> have to maintain GNAT Ada on GCC. For x86 I have to base on the Gnat Ada 
> front end for LLVM, since VSI ports VMS to x86 
> (https://vmssoftware.com/updates/state-of-the-port/) basing the 
> compilers on LLVM.
> 
> I know that Adacore dropped commercial support for Gnat Ada on OpenVMS 
> in 2015. It's not the commercial reasons that interest me.
> 
> In approaching this project again I would like to know as much as 
> possible about how far Adacore's people or helpers have come in their 
> developments for OpenVMS, what problems they have dealt with in the GCC 
> upgrades they have resolved, only considered, and those they have seen 
> as too difficult and blocking. The question arises as well for the 
> upgrades (with for example around this time the transition of the GCC 
> build to C++) as for the evolution of the debug management.
> 
> If the answers raise confidentiality issues, I don't want to put anyone 
> in trouble, but I'm looking for indications on who to negotiate with.
> 
> It's not impossible that Adacore's people were among the last to develop 
> GCC for OpenVMS Itanium. They may also be able to inform me about the 
> build of the C and C++ part for GCC OpenVMS. I think indeed to associate 
> to my efforts for Ada the exploration of the availability of a C++ GCC 
> for Itanium OpenVMS.
> 
> This resumption of project is quite at its beginning. My goal is to open 
> as much as possible the work and its results to a collaborative work, in 
> Open Source standards. One of my first tasks will be to update the 
> current repository to allow opened development.
> 
> Gérard Calliet

      parent reply	other threads:[~2020-08-18 18:49 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-08-17 17:14 Ada on OpenVMS, where to have a new beginning gérard Calliet
2020-08-17 18:56 ` Andreas ZEURCHER
2020-08-18 18:49 ` nobody in particular [this message]
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