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Date: 11 Nov 92 22:40:56 GMT
From: att!cbnewsm!cbnewsl!willett@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (david.c.willett)
Subject: Re: Calling Ada from a non-Ada language
Message-ID: <1992Nov11.224056.15821@cbnewsl.cb.att.com>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

>>From article <1992Nov11.172455.11472@dale.ksc.nasa.gov>, by rsimonia@dale.ksc.
nasa.gov (Rick Simonian):
> 
> I'm sure that most will consider this to be gross and unwieldy,
> but we need to be able to call Ada routines from non-Ada 
> languages.  We first want to solve the problem from C; other
> languages need to be addressed later.

dcw-> You got that right, it's pretty gross and unwieldy, but what precisely
dcw-> do you mean by "call Ada routines from non-Ada languages"?  Do you 
dcw-> intend for a C function (possibly main) to call an Ada procedure?
dcw-> Would running the Ada units as a "detached" (in VMS-speak) or
dcw-> "child" process solve your problem?  Why do you need to do this
dcw-> anyway?

dcw->	(John Bentley, in "Programming Pearls" says to always ask that
dcw->	 last question).
dcw->
>
> I would like to know of any experience doing this in a Unix
> environment, both where Ada is the main procedure, and where
> C (for example) is the main procedure.  I'm aware of the
> obvious problems: how to link the executable if Ada is not
> the main, how to elaborate the Ada runtime, use of exceptions, 
> passing complex structures, how tasking works, and so forth.
> 
> Ada provides a reasonable means of calling non-Ada routines,
> but you hit a brick wall going the other way.  This problem
> needs to be addressed in order to better integrate Ada into
> a heterogeneous environment.
> 
> Rick Simonian
> Harris Space Systems Corp.
> simonian@x102a.ess.harris.com
>
 
-- 
Dave Willett          AT&T Federal Systems Advanced Technologies
attmail!dwillett      (AT&T FSAT)
-- Some girls don't like boys like me.... Oh but some girls do!
	-- Sawyer Brown