From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,c23311c4d57b937e X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!wn11feed!worldnet.att.net!207.35.177.252!nf3.bellglobal.com!nf1.bellglobal.com!nf2.bellglobal.com!news20.bellglobal.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Embedded Keynote Speaker Mentions Ada References: <414B6E62.9070402@acm.org> <0hL2d.762$QB1.501@trndny02> <414E2306.6030404@acm.org> <8%q3d.1820$kn2.1441@trndny07> <414EE3A0.9080106@acm.org> <1095728821.921629@yasure> In-Reply-To: <1095728821.921629@yasure> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 12:59:47 -0400 NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.96.223.163 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sympatico.ca X-Trace: news20.bellglobal.com 1095785886 198.96.223.163 (Tue, 21 Sep 2004 12:58:06 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 12:58:06 EDT Organization: Bell Sympatico Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:3899 Date: 2004-09-21T12:59:47-04:00 List-Id: Benjamin Ketcham wrote: > Cesar Rabak wrote: > >>Even in a non commercial arena, why can't we convince Open Source >>enthusiats to write the system software in Ada and start to make a >>difference in this realm (my perception of their account on bugs is that >>they have a better response time, not intrinsical better designed in >>security)? > > Well, this is a very good point. I would suggest that a way to > make Ada much more popular, would be to recode the Linux kernel > in Ada. I think your heart is in the right place, but I would suggest that an Ada clone of Linux makes it a wanna-be. In some senses it is probably true that Linux was a UNIX-wannabe, though Linus admitted that it was easier to use existing standards (POSIX for example) than to develop new one(s). I would suggest that an Ada O/S with the same principles learned from UNIX et al. would be a good thing, but let's not do a "UNIX version in Ada" or a "Linux version in Ada". Radically new O/S research is welcomed also but the danger there is that something radically different is not likely to get off the ground. So I would suggest that a practical Ada O/S with "normal features" could be developed without the need to follow a standard. Maybe this too is asking too much because it requires the development of both a new O/S and a new "standard" (and obviously a big porting headache for X11 etc). Yet it would be real nice to have a natural Ada API base on which C programs had to adapt. ;_) > How long does someone who actually knows Ada (not me) think it > would take to translate the kernel to Ada? I think this process is the wrong way to put something into Ada. Ada can be made to look like a C program, but I don't see any benefit to that. Only by redesign, in Ada terms (not C ones), does such a project have any useful outcome. For this you toss away the C code, and design from the requirements. And what I am suggesting is that you don't need the Linux kernel to dictate your requirements. -- Warren W. Gay VE3WWG http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg