Re: Looking for MS-DOS ADA Compiler!!

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Mike Feldman)]

Meridian Software Systems (1-800-221-2522) has a version of their system
called AdaStudent. It is full Ada except for Chapter 13. Tasking, generics,
whatever, are supported as fully as their commercial product. It costs
$50.00 (that's right, fifty dollars). They will take VISA and ship by UPS;
usually takes a week or two to get it. They'll overnight it if you pay.

It's a "vanilla" system: compiler, Ada-level linker, decent debugger. No
editor, no libraries. Many of my students have used it with success; I
use it and its production-quality cousin all the time. I'm satisfied
that it's a quite respectable piece of software. Because of the missing
Chapter 13 support it can't be validated, but otherwise it is validatable -
it's the same product as the big one, which has a current validation.

The only machine requirements are 640k and a hard disk. Floating-point
is software-emulated (another difference from the big one, which can use
a coprocessor). An XT with 640k and a hard disk will be slow but serviceable.
In my opinion, it's $50. well spent to learn Ada and work with it on class
projects, etc.

If you want to spend more ($249., I think) try IntegrAda from AETech (I
don't have their number but they are in the San Diego area). This is a
Turbo-Pascal-like development environment (editor, single-keystroke commands,
etc.) wrapped around a Janus-Ada compiler. Comes with some libraries:
math, graphics, etc. Personally I like the Meridian _compiler_ better
(has a more solid "feel" to it) but IntegrAda is quite serviceable and
has the better library support (in the cheap version). Same machine
requirements as Ada Student. I am writing a book and using IntegrAda to
develop all the code for it. Development environment is great. Ignore
the pop-up menus and use the function keys. Neat and pretty fast on my
8 MHz AT. It's validated. I like Meridian's tasking support better.

In both cases, you _will_ need to give the systems as much memory as you
can, which means no TSR programs, Sidekick, terminal emulators, network
software, etc. But it's not true that you need megabytes to compile
respectable Ada code: a "standard" DOS machine is just fine.
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Prof. Michael Feldman
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
+1-202-994-5253
mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu
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