ECLAT [was: Ada memory management?]

[Nick Roberts <nick.roberts@acm.org>]

Luke A. Guest wrote:

>>    http://sourceforge.net/projects/eclat
> 
> Erm, how far are you with this project Nick? I've known about it for a
> while and your page doesn't really have anything on it (yet), how about an
> update?

Honest truth is, not very far yet. There are a few docs under the 'Docs' link.

> Also, are you using GCC at all? That would be interesting; it might spur
> some competition with ACT ;-D If you're not using GCC, maybe you should
> try using it to speed up development.

I do want ECLAT to be (friendly :-) competition for GNAT/GCC, both in the 
front and and the back end. I think this is a case where it makes sense to 
'reinvent the wheel'. If people who are new to Ada ask "Are there any free 
compilers?", I think it would sound a lot better to be able to suggest two, 
rather than just one. (I know there is ObjectAda, but it is really only a 
demo version.)

There are some technical reasons why GNAT and GCC are unsuited to what I 
want to achieve.

GNAT's library model is based on source code files directly representing 
the library; this model isn't always ideal. I want to provide a compiler 
that has the more traditional model of a library being stored in a set of 
files which contain all the necessary information (to generate executables) 
in a binary form.

I want ECLAT to be able to target the AdaOS native executable format for 
the IA-32 (NEAI/IA-32), which is segmented. GCC emits code which is 
suitable (only) for a 'flat' memory model, and I think adapting it to 
generate code that supports the NEAI/IA-32 segmented architecture would be 
difficult.

-- 
Nick Roberts