Re: understanding runtime support

[mjsilva@scriptoriumdesigns.com]

On Monday, May 14, 2012 1:04:56 PM UTC-7, Patrick wrote:
> Hi Shark8
> 
> Okay now I am seriously mixed up.
> 
> While I haven't read them all, I now own 18 Ada books and have spent nearly everyday studying for 5 months and now have hit a very hard wall.
> 
> Ada is an embedded language right? I have been working on a desktop project for my Son in Ada that would have been easier in Python. I did this because I wanted to do a nice job with it and I wanted to prepare myself for a for-profit-embedded project to be completed later on.
> 
> Now it seems I am supposed to roll my own runtime or other low level solution, now that I want to do something embedded I am confronted by an unexpected problem.
> 
> I am feeling very discouraged after investing so much time(and that others invested their time in me)
> 
> Is full, multi-tasking, Ada only used for embedded design by companies like Boeing that can port Ada to new devices all by themselves? What do small time people like me do?
> 
> I am seriously confused now and feel trapped. I do not have the skills to write my own runtime or even part of a runtime. -Patrick

I find this situation rather insane as well.  As you said, Ada is an embedded language.  OK, to be more precise, Ada is a language which had as a primary design goal the creation of embedded applications.  And yet it seems in practice to be quite impossible to use on embedded applications without a full-blown OS/RTOS underneath it.  

One _can_ do Ada tasking, at least, using a bare metal implementation - the GNAT Lego Mindstorms port does this, I believe.  Sadly, there does not seem to be a cookbook as to how to create such a bare metal port for other devices/families.  I find the situation be be rather astonishing.  As I pointed out in another thread, there are 4 billion ARM chips produced each year, and Ada is an excellent fit for every one of those 4 billion chips, but the Ada community doesn't seem to be interested in that market, or any of the numerous other 32-bit embedded parts available.  This strikes me as madness if one wants Ada to grow and prosper.