Re: Public Release of AdaSAGE (Re: Why is the DOE selling AdaSage?)

[agate!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!The-Star.h]

In article <1993Feb12.173406.8810@beaver.cs.washington.edu> drupp@cs.washington
.edu (Douglas Rupp) writes:
>In article <EACHUS.93Feb11194235@oddjob.mitre.org> eachus@oddjob.mitre.org (Ro
bert I. Eachus) writes:
>
>		....  stuff deleted ...
>
>>
>>    3) I have little experience with AdaSAGE and no recent experience,
>>but the ordering information lists versions for 80x86, RS/6000, Sun
>>SPARC, and AT&T 3B2, with PC versions coming in both Alsys and
>>Meridian versions.  Sounds portable (or at least significantly ported)
>>to me.
>>
>>   [deletia]
>>
>>					Robert I. Eachus
>>
>		.... more stuff deleted ...
>
>As I recall AdaSage is distributed in source code form, therefore
>it seems to me that an Ada program which needs to have a different version
>for each and every platform and compiler in existence just lends credence
>to the comments in Greg's last post about lack of portability.
>
>A properly designed and written program should have compiler and platform
>dependencies isolated to as few packages as possible.  In general these
>dependencies are the command line interface, which is different even
>among compilers from the same vendor on different platforms;  and the
>interface to the system runtime and C application libraries.  There is
>no good reason for a system such as AdaSage to require a different version
>for every platform/vendor.
>

My experience with AdaSAGE has shown that is is very non-portable.
This is not to say it can't run on different platforms, just that
the effort to port the system is non-trivial.  

Perhaps most importantly is that the schema display program, THOR,
which displays the information from AdaSAGE, requires the use of
a PC (Intel-based system).  In spite of the bragging about the
portability, there are limitations to just _how_ portable AdaSAGE
really is.

DISCLAIMER: My knowledge of AdaSAGE is about 1.5 years old.  If
my above comments are outdated, please let me know.  Also, the last
I heard, THOR was written in Modula-2.

----------I don't speak for the AJPO or CAE-Link : Aren't we lucky? ;-) -----
David Weller,         | Space Station Training Facility: Like the real
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----I'm the Ultimate International Masochist: I speak Ada AND Esperanto!-----