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Date: 18 Sep 93 14:04:12 GMT
From: lab.ultra.nyu.edu!kenner@nyu.edu  (Richard Kenner)
Subject: Re: Current state of Ada 9X compilers...?
Message-ID: <27f4gs$m9k@cmcl2.NYU.EDU>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <27eqku$o5t@klaava.Helsinki.FI> stickler@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Patric 
M Stickler) writes:
>What about GNAT. Is it just an academic exercise, or is it expected
>to be an "industrial strength" compiler for "real" projects. I'm in
>general very impressed with the quality and portability of GNU
>applications, and for that matter sympathetic to the FSF cause, but
>could someone in-the-know tell me what the actual involvement of the
>FSF is in the GNAT project. Does NYU simply have permission to base
>GNAT on gcc, or does the FSF actually plan to promote the use of Ada 9X.
>Will GNAT become like GNU Smalltalk, which although OK for learning,
>is too clumsy for real development? (IMHO, no flames please)

Let me address a number of your questions.  First of all, GNAT is
certainly not an "academic exercise".  I don't know what an
"industrial strength" compiler would necessarily mean, but our goal is
to make it at least as reliable as GNU C.  Even in its present very
preliminary state, it is being used for a significant "real" project:
itself!  Most of the GNAT developers no longer use any Ada compiler
other than GNAT.

Although we have not yet done any significant Ada-specific
optimizations, we are quite pleased both with our compilation speed
and performance of the generated code.  Both are at least 3 times
better than that of the commercial compiler we previously used, which
is why we switched to using GNAT internally.  If you write an Ada
subprogram at the same semantic level as a C function, you should get
the identical machine code for both on most GCC targets.  Once we
finish, you should even be getting better code for the Ada subprogram
in some cases, since we can do a better job determining which pointers
cannot alias to each other and other variables than can be done for C.

We don't need "permission" to base GNAT on GCC, since the whole
purpose of the GNU Public License is precisely to encourage such
noncommercial uses of GCC.  The FSF does not itself promote the use of
any one of its tools, so it will not promote Ada.

There is significant cooperation between the FSF and the GNAT project.
We have had a number of meetings with Stallman (RMS).  I am the member
of the GNAT project that is most responsible for the interface between
the front end and GCC and the person who is responsible for making the
necessary enhancements to GCC.  I am also one of the primary GCC
maintainers for the FSF and will shortly have primary responsibility
for the maintainance of GCC as a whole.