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Date: 5 Sep 93 18:19:01 GMT
From: agate!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uchinews!cs.umd.edu!not-f
or-mail@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU  (Alex Blakemore)
Subject: Re: Ada/Ed on NeXT
Message-ID: <26dail$3do@seine.cs.umd.edu>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <1993Sep5.154957.2063@socrates.umd.edu> ice@socrates.umd.edu (Fredri
k Nyman) writes:
> Has anyone successfully compiled Ada/Ed on NeXT?

try asking on comp.lang.ada.
I know people have gotten it to work on the Amiga, so
it shouldnt be too hard.
 
> Or should I just go for GNAT instead?

when, its done - this Ada addition to gcc should be amazing.
the people doing it are really first class compiler developers 
with lots of experience.

but its a big job and its not done yet.
I'ld wait a few months for GNAT, but if you wish to work on
a NeXT port go ahead.  the only problem is you need a working
Ada compiler for the bootstrap process since the front end is written
in Ada (the backend is shared with gcc).  so you probably need to
build a gcc cross compiler from sparc to NeXT, cross compile the front
end sources, and then rebuild the gcc compiler on the NeXT linking
with the Ada objects for the front end.

Its not impossible by any means, they've ported to RS6000 and Alpha
with little trouble, but its probably easier to wait a little while longer.

on the other hand, if you want the OS2 or SPARC version, grab it
from cs.nyu.edu:/pub/gnat - those are the initial targets during development.

finally, something of interest to users of other languages.
the Ada, Modula3 and C++ teams for gcc are adding support
to the gcc backend for checked arithmetic and exceptions, which 
those languages provide in some form.  this means that you may
be able mix/match exception raising/handling from the different languages.
It also means that C programs will have the CHOICE of generating checked
arithmetic, meaning that overflows will be detected.
(ansi C states that overflow is an error, but compilers
traditionally dont check - soon gcc will give you the option of checking)
-- 
Alex Blakemore       alex@cs.umd.edu        NeXT mail accepted
--------------------------------------------------------------
"Without an engaged and motivated human being at the keyboard,
the computer is just another dumb box."      William Raspberry