Re: Validated Ada Compiler List

[case@shamash.cdc.com (Steven V. Case)]

In article <13696@june.cs.washington.edu>, pattis@cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis) writes:

> The most recent review of PC compilers I have (Aetech, Alsys, Meridian,
> R&R, Telesoft) appears in PC Week, September 10th, page 107-112.

I saw the review and felt fairly comfortable with the results (although I'm
not in agreement as to the ranking of the compilers, mostly since my experience
with the compilers has been different).

Of all the PC based compiler reviews that I have seen, they have all ignored
one factor that is significant to me evaluations, network support.  After all,
isn't one of the advantages of Ada the ability to support large projects?
And doesn't a large project imply a large number of people?  And if you have
a large number of people, don't you need an efficient method of sharing and
controlling the source code and the Ada libraries?

One of the recent technologies in PC environments that I think have made it
possible to efficiently develop large programs on PCS is the advent of 
networks. I certainly want my Ada compiler to support my network, and prefer-
ably to take advantage of it.  I have not used the JANUS/Ada compiler for 
about a year or so now, but when I did it required too much memory to execute
when we had our PC's connected to the network.  I am currently using the
Meridian and the Alsys compilers.  The Alsys compiler has the same problem
as the JANUS/Ada compiler.  Fortunately, Meridian's compiler will function
properly when the network is loaded (at least the extended mode compiler will).
Better still, the Meridian compiler will allow us to have multiple people
compiling out of the same library and will do enough locking of resources to
prevent the library from becoming corrupted.

Anyone else have an opinion on this?

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