Mac OS System 8 & Ada95

Mac OS System 8 & Ada95

[Kenneth Mays]

Hi,

As far as I know from the developers for Apple, there is little 
support for "Ada 95" development. With the support for CodeWarrior 
and MPW (Assembler/C/Pascal), it doesn't seem like they want to add 
more fire to the already hard job of development for the PowerMac 
line.

Not to say its not viable to establish a Ada compiler for the Apple 
computers since they do claim a 15% market share, but it goes back 
into the books and support of Ada programming on the Macintosh. 
Macintoshs are great for graphics and DTP work. I can't say that I 
don't like the computer. I do say that I know how humans work and how 
they buy computers based on what their friends or peers have. But 
that is another subject.

GNAT is being developed for the Macintosh and I think that will be a 
start for Ada95 programmers that want to use this platform. Apple 
sticks by what is tried and true with their C++/Assembler compilers 
because of the many man hours that went into building the information 
you need to work within their OS. They did have Ada 83 compilers for 
the Macintosh but I don't have any recent material for Ada95 
commercial development on these platforms (and Apple doesn't claim to 
stand by Ada95 development yet). If you do find a compiler, it might 
be for the older OS, and doubt any support for Mac OS 8 will follow 
with any huge support.

But then again, they told us that we have invented everything that 
needs to be invented. Don't hold your breath.

Ken
kmays@msn.com
Computer Science and Engineering (Ada95)

RE: Mac OS System 8 & Ada95

[Kenneth Mays]

This is just to let you know that GNAT V3.05 is available for both 
the Mac 68K and PowerMac. Just dealing with the PowerMac, you have to 
download two files from the ftp.cs.nyu.edu site:

/pub/gnat/powermac

gnat3.05-ppc.bin
gnat3.05-ppc.2.bin

If you have any problems, refer the information to: gnat-mac@lists.csn.net.

Ken Mays, Ada95 Researcher
kmays@msn.com

RE: Mac OS System 8 & Ada95

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <00001a73+00003453@msn.com>, KMays@msn.com (Kenneth Mays) writes:
> This is just to let you know that GNAT V3.05 is available for both 
> the Mac 68K and PowerMac.

Everything I have heard so far indicates that for 68K the resultant
applications can run only under the Tenon environment.  That means
someone writing a commercial application would only be able to sell
it to customers who also bought the Tenon environment.

For the PowerMac environment, the situation is reportedly much better,
and at least one person expressed to me a goal of fixing the situation
for 68K, but as I understand the current situation the two platforms
are not at parity.  For most commercial purposes it is not possible
to exclude 68K users.  Anyone who was busy writing MacOS 8 -only
applications (implicitly PowerPC-only) got a rude awakening in
August when the president of Apple indicated there would be many
successive System 7 enhancement release (implicitly 68K-capable)
before MacOS 8 arrived.

Larry Kilgallen

RE: Mac OS System 8 & Ada95

[full]

In article <1996Sep10.102855.1@eisner>
kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) writes:

> Everything I have heard so far indicates that for 68K the resultant
> applications can run only under the Tenon environment.  That means
> someone writing a commercial application would only be able to sell
> it to customers who also bought the Tenon environment.

Larry is correct 68k apps are machten only.  I have looked at what it
will take to get 68k apps to be generated by the ppc version of the
compiler. i have built a 68k cross compiler in the past.  the nice
thing about gnat is that source is available and we can enhance it to
meet our needs.  i have spent a lot of time working on gnat for the mac
in the last year, and with a LOT of help from ACT i have a fair
understanding of gnat and gnat tasking on the mac.  i obviously cant do
it all, one of mac-gnat team is working on improved thin bindings, a
user has released a first cut at a thick binding and mac OS application
framework.  its still in the early stages but it is something to build
on.  i am working on IDE, and i know that mike Feldman is think along
the lines of getting his students working on a mac IDE as they did for
dos.  there was a lot of requests for Mac Ada its here now its real,
but its a basis for growth!  I have gotten a lot of help from the gnat
team, and i am more than willing to give some of it back to the ada
community by helping others build on gnat-mac!

best jim