From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,9923b1c3be80099b X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) Subject: Re: Ada on the Mac (was: AppletMagic stuff) Date: 1996/10/07 Message-ID: <1996Oct7.100737.1@eisner>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 187324115 x-nntp-posting-host: eisner.decus.org references: <324BF60E.4DEF@gsfc.nasa.gov> <533bki$d5n@felix.seas.gwu.edu> <5395s7$bu8@felix.seas.gwu.edu> x-nntp-posting-user: KILGALLEN x-trace: 844697262/7410 organization: LJK Software newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-10-07T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <5395s7$bu8@felix.seas.gwu.edu>, mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes: > In article , > Matthew Heaney 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