Re: Ada on the Mac (was: AppletMagic stuff)

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <5395s7$bu8@felix.seas.gwu.edu>, mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:
> In article <mheaney-ya023180000610961022420001@news.ni.net>,
> Matthew Heaney <mheaney@ni.net> wrote:

>>Symantec, Metrowerks: how about an Ada compiler for the Mac?
> 
> Not very likely; they would see this as just undercutting their
> existing compilers, diminishing the market for each.

> As has been discussed many times in this group, the Mac comes with no  
> command-line interface on which a traditional development environment
> can be built. One is always forced to purchase an IDE. MPW is one
> popular IDE (it's produced by APPLE, but Apple has always been
> wishy-washy in its support thereof); Symantec and Metrowerks'
> CodeWarrior are the other two biggies. The point is that realistically,
> an Ada must fit into one of these, or...

Symantec has expressed a policy of welcoming other compilers to their
IDE, freely publishing the interface specifications.  They are being
beaten up about their Pascal non-support so they seem an unlikely
candidate to do a compiler, but adapting to their IDE might be
possible for someone else.  Symantec may have a reputation
below that of Metrowerks in the Macintosh developer community,
but for many their IDE ranks far above MPW (which is alleged
to be still quite command-line oriented).

> Sure, MachTen costs a few hundred bucks, but it is a much more
> useful system than Linux, at least right now, and Tenon is
> committed to keeping their GNU infrastructure stable and up to date.
> 
> If you're willing to buy a copy of MachTen, you'll find the GNAT
> for Mac a pretty decent system already. Bindings to a pretty large
> number of toolbox libraries are provided, and genuine, double-clickable
> Mac apps can be generated. The standalone apps do not themselves
> require MachTen. This is similar to the MPW style in which a program
> can be built either as an MPW tool or as a free-standing app.

But my understanding is the current version still requires MachTen
for executing on a 68K machine.  That may work for education (the
basis on which this thread has been proceeding), but is not viable
for most commercial applications.

> Currently, the only big thing missing from the GNAT-Mac distribution
> is the ability to link _tasking_ programs as standalone apps. This is
> changing fast; we expect to have a standalone tasking runtime ready
> for release in the very near future, quite possibly with 3.07.

Keep us posted.

Larry Kilgallen