Re: Switching to a more recent compiler.

[Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com>]

On Thursday, March 29, 2012 3:30:20 PM UTC-7, Shark8 wrote:
> On Thursday, March 29, 2012 4:12:20 PM UTC-6, austin...@hotmail.com wrote:
> > I am in my late seventies and I have spent a lot of time and effort promoting Ada through some cryptography I have invented that is a world first in “Theoretically Unbreakable” ciphers.
> > 
> > I have used a gnat311.p compiler for all of this that came with the textbook I used to teach myself Ada-95.
> > 
> > What I need to know from some young blood in the know is this, “will my stuff run straight off in a revised compiler like say Ada-2005 without some editing.
> > 
> > I want to be able to tell other users whether it does or not.
> > 
> > An obvious answer might be “suck it and see” – I’m a bit knackered however and I can’t get around easily these days so if some kind person who knows the answer straight off could tell me then I would be very grateful.
> > 
> > - adacrypt
> 
> Someone with more experience than I would be more qualified to answer, but I haven't come across any incompatability-examples in my own searches which leads me to believe that the two are compatable.
> 
> According to wikipedia ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Category:Ada_Programming/Ada_2005_incompatibilities ) the only incompatability is the 'Bit_Order attribute.

No, that's just the only incompatibility that anyone bothered to enter into that Wikipedia page.  There are many more than that.  Just off the top of my head, Ada 2005 introduced three new reserved words, so any program that compiled in Ada 95 that uses one of those three reserved words will no longer compile in Ada 2005 (except for "pragma interface").

If you look at the Annotated Ada Reference Manual (http://www.adaic.org/standards/05aarm/html/AA-TOC.html), many sections have sections toward the bottom labeled "Inconsistencies with Ada 95" or "Incompatibilities with Ada 95".  The Inconsistencies are cases where a program would legally compile in both Ada 95 and Ada 2005 but could have different behavior.  Incompatibilites are cases where a program that was legal in Ada 95 could become illegal in Ada 2005.

I have a text version of the AARM and it's easy for me to find all the sections that have Inconsistencies or Incompatibilities, so I'll post a list in a few minutes.

                      -- Adam