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

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

In article <53b87u$bm9@felix.seas.gwu.edu>, mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:
> In article <1996Oct7.100737.1@eisner>,
> Larry Kilgallen <kilgallen@eisner.decus.org> wrote:
> 
>>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.  
> 
> Which compiler would you adapt to their UI? 

I don't know enough about compilers to say, but I just wanted to
ensure that any readers out there who were being daunted by the
IDE aspects knew there was an alternative to writing their own.

> The problem is not selecting the IDE but doing the compiler.

Having just heard about the selection of MachTen due to it having
a command-line style of operation, it just occured to me that
some folk who might be in a position to make a difference were
not aware of that IDE option.  Perhaps Metrowerks makes the same
offer, for all I know.

> (referring to MachTen producing standalone Mac apps)
> 
>>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.
> 
> I agree with you. If Tenon comes to see this as a business advantage,
> maybe they will do it. IMHO, the way to go is not to worry too much
> about the 68k as a _host_, but rather to focus on a PPC-hosted
> cross-compiler capable of producing fat (68k+PPC) binaries.

Absolutely !  I can affect the mix of 68K vs. PPC machines
in the development environment, but there is no way to change
that at customer sites.  To paraphrase some politician,
"Dollars for Development, not one cent for runtime royalties."

> As my note yesterday pointed out, MachTen has been marketed historically
> as a UN*X server, not so much as a development system. This is changing,
> and GNAT-Mac is a big part of the change. If it "works" - if MachTen
> becomes a decently popular development system - then its creators will
> have the incentives to make the enhancements we'd all like to see.

And they will have a much easier time getting Apple support.
Apple may not be the richest company but they have the ear of
a lot of software developers.

Larry Kilgallen