Re: Ada and Mac (Was: New version of AppletMagic)

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

In article <53gikd$1nr@felix.seas.gwu.edu>, mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:

> Please, before theorizing further, think about just how you
> would get an Ada 95 compiler to plug in to CodeWarrior. We've
> been around this loop many times.

In no way did I mean to imply that such an effort would be easy, and a
recent post from someone even went into difficulties which would be
involved connecting GNAT to Symantec's IDE (Rainbow?).  I have
no basis to believe that Metrowerks does not use a similar idea
of memory-driven compilation for their IDE.

But I also did not mean to restrict consideration to GNAT.  Yes,
that may be the only possibility for Macintosh now, but things
might change at some point in the future.

> The general issue has been discussed with Metrowerks principals.
> They were not _in the least_ interested in developing an Ada 95 
> front end. They are willing to provide their plug-in specs,
> as they would to any developer, but made it quite clear that if
> GNAT was involved, they would do _nothing_ to support or promote
> it, or even put it on their site for contributed software.
> 
> Pure and simple, they wanted nothing whatsoever to do with anything
> under the GPL.

Thanks for the background on their GPL attitude.  As for front ends,
Metroworks has been known to violently change their opinion with the
passage of time, although such possibilities cannot be counted on.

> In my opinion, AdaMagic (or indeed AppletMagic, which is what started
> this thread) would be a good candidate for a Mac port (whether free-
> standing or as a CW plug-in). At least the front end exists. 
> 
> This brings us full circle - Intermetrics apparently did not find 
> that an interesting idea, even though it was originally part of the 
> Academic Ada contract.

Intermetrics web pages express a willingess to sell their front end
for use with someone else's back end.  Some investor who wanted to
fund code generators could someday build a bridge to Metrowerks or
Symantec.  That investor would expect substantial money back, nicely
differentiating the offering from GNAT.

Larry Kilgallen
interested for the long haul :-)