Re: Developing on a Mac

[Blady <p.p11@orange.fr>]

Le 16/10/2020 à 01:41, Jerry a écrit :
> On Wednesday, October 14, 2020 at 9:40:00 AM UTC-7, wrote:
>> I searched but could not find.
>> How to develop Ada programs on a Mac today (Catalina)?
>> GNAT CE 2020 for Mac has no GPS anymore.
>> Must one use Xcode?
>> How make Xcode Ada-aware and integrate it with GNAT?
>> Some other Ada-aware IDE for Mac?
>> Thanks a lot.
> 
> Some of the following is kind of vague but I hope it is useful. Many listers will know much more.
> 
> One time a long time ago someone (on this list?) made Xcode work with Ada. It was fantastic. Even a debugger IIRC. But apparently Apple likes to change the underpinnings and after some time Xcode ceased to work with Ada. (There also is or was a FPC Pascal way with Xcode that was even more capable but I haven't checked into that for a long time.)
> 
> There also used to be Carbon bindings to Ada, possibly made by the same person. (The words "Blady" and "Pascal" come to mind for this person.) They were on the macada.org web site which doesn't seem to do much these days, as well as being linked from AdaPower. Of course the Carbon API has been long-deprecated but I'm sure it is still used. (How does Microsoft keep Word et al working on Macs?)

If I remember well, the Carbon bindings were provided by James E. Hopper
from a Pascal to Ada translation with p2ada of Apple Carbon API in Pascal.
Though Carbon may still work, Apple weren't maintaining the Pascal API, 
but only C API.
Thus Ada Carbon Bindings weren't more used as far as I know.
I provided some Xcode support to Ada but after, as you said, Xcode was 
no more custumable.
You'll find here some historical material:
https://blady.pagesperso-orange.fr/alpha.html

Best, Pascal.