Re: ada -> C translator

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

In article <dewar.860170469@merv>, dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> <<I was under the impression that ANSI C did not provide anything
> equivalent to Ada tasking.  Therefore I thought that a translator
> would have to choose between portability and feature completeness.>>
> 
> Wrong level of thinking. At the generated code level, tasking translates
> into calls to the runtime library. Deciding to generate C does not remove
> the task of coding a runtime library -- presumably this would be coded in
> C, although it could also be coded in Ada (using the compiler to bootstrap,
> the GNAT compiler uses VERY little of the runtime in the compiler itself).
> But all tasking would be accomplished by using either the existing GNAT
> (or other Ada technology) runtime, or creating a new runtime specially for
> the purposes of this translator.

In that case I would count that runtime library as part of the
"translation" of the Ada program into C, and it seems unlikely
to be portable for the tasking implementation.

Or does the specification of ANSI C include Posix thread calls ?

Larry