Re: Five Years After

[Robert Eachus <rieachus@comcast.net>]

On Wednesday, January 24, 2018 at 8:50:20 AM UTC-5, Simon Clubley wrote:

> I've recently been told that Adacore no longer support VMS. I wonder
> if this is a one-off or part of a larger cutback in the number of
> platforms that Adacore are willing to support.

Special case, I think.  Ada Core was paid by DEC to support everything that DEC Ada did, and Ada 95.  This included support for DEC specific, non-ANSI floating-point types.  I can't imagine supporting those features without a VAX to test on.  Once you turn off your last VAX or Alpha? machine, you can't test the VMS parts of the Ada Core port, even if there are still some users.

I suspect that the DoD was paying for VMS support somewhere, since certain algorithms used by Cheyenne Mountain used those types.  No big deal to change to IEEE standard types as long as all the software was updated together.  The DoD doesn't want to have an argument between different commands and Cheyenne Mountain about whether a particular missile targets a protected area or will miss.  (There are/were VAXen in the various commands, like Southern Command, and at ground launch sites, radar and other sensor sites, etc.)