Re: understanding runtime support

[Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com>]

I'm going to address this in reverse-order.

>I am seriously confused now and feel trapped. I do not have the skills to write my own runtime or even part of a runtime.

This is understandable; and I think it is probably the big cause of the "I want to write an OS in Ada" sentiment that many express to 'wither and die' [or at least not come to fruition]. 

And it surely doesn't help that many [most?] OS types will pop out "why don't you use C/C++" or "just download the Linux code and..." (i.e. do everything the way "everyone else" does and/or become-a-script-kiddy.)

I'm one of those who would like to write an Ada OS.

> I am feeling very discouraged after investing so much time(and that others invested their time in me)

Don't be. The knowledge is good.

> Now it seems I am supposed to roll my own runtime or other low level solution, now that I want to do something embedded I am confronted by an unexpected problem.

I don't know; you're stepping into the area where I've always gotten hangups: operating on bare-bones hardware.

> Ada is an embedded language right? I have been working on a desktop project for my Son in Ada that would have been easier in Python. I did this because I wanted to do a nice job with it and I wanted to prepare myself for a for-profit-embedded project to be completed later on.

I see. I know that Ada was designed to be able to do embedded; and from what I've read on this forum does it well... though I don't know if they're using it w/o a runtime, with their "normal" runtime compiled for that target [by some magic?], or with a custom runtime.

> While I haven't read them all, I now own 18 Ada books and have spent nearly everyday studying for 5 months and now have hit a very hard wall.

I hear you. I hit that wall with respect to writing a toy OS, and never got around it. I don't think it's the language's fault, but rather the toolchain.

I had started it [the OS] with BP7, after finding a boot-loader which could run a .COM or .EXE file so long as it didn't use the DOS interrupts; I had gotten it so that it could display things on the screen, accept commands from the keyboard, and change video-modes.

When I tried rewriting it in Ada, I couldn't ever get it to compile to a straight-from-boot runnable exe; the problem was, of course, the [lack of a] runtime.

> Okay now I am seriously mixed up.

Me too. :(
Though I really wish I could be more helpful.