gnat on macintosh

["James E. Hopper" <hopperj@macconnect.com>]

Lets start with open disclosure, i maintain the Machten/Codebuilder
port of Gnat.  Current version 3.12p has been reeleased. I have a few
things to say about the views presented so far for machten version of
gnat.

My view is that linux is a pain in the ass!  I put togeather a
yellowdox linuxppc system on a spare 8500 and it was a royal pain to
get running, and when i use it i am limited to editors like emacs, or
nedit.  while a lot of people are fully happy in a full unix
environment i always feel like i am trying to work through a bottle
neck like those people who build ships in a bottle!  In addition there
is no really tested gnat port.  there are a couple starting to be
available, and they do bootstrap, BUT they are either built on top of
gcc 2.8.1 which has a broken code generator for linuxppc or egcs, which
according to the developers of gnat has worse problems.  you want to
talk about frustrating look for a bug thats caused by broken compiler
;-)  the compiler running under machten has passed full validation,
though i havent run it lately i will admit.  When ACT releases the
linuxppc compiler to the public then you will have an ada environment
thats safe to use for more than a hobby.

bbedit is so superior to anything else i use!  in addition i like being
able to design using the shareware ($25) UML tool, use the really cool
cvs client that the netscape people contributed to mac world, not to
mention being able to do my diagrams and docs using tools like claris
draw, or appleworke while i work on my code.  

In addition the machten/codebuilder compiler will build standalone
double clickable mac apps, OpenGl, and X/Motif apps.  there is only
limited support for OpenGL in linuxppc.

While its not free codebuilder is like $120 or so, and if you purchase
Mike Feldmans Ada95 Textbook Codebuilder is on the cd in the back of
the book with a license for a couple of semesters i belive.

yes machten crashes from time to time, though its gotten a lot better
over the last few years, and yes not everything is ported to machten. 
not that i have found much that i care about in this category since i
prefer to work in a mac environemtn.  to me machten is a shell like the
mpw shell, which provides me with the capability to string tools
togeather with perl and some other things, but realistically i bought 
amac because i like working in the mac environment, not to become a
unix sys admin!



as to tenon not answering, i hear some people say this, others rave
about the help they get.  i rarely have any trouble getting machten
help.  i don't always get help porting this or that unix tool.  thats
not what i belive i paid for, others have different opinions.

i build and maintain some of our companies image processing tools for
radar on the mac using machten and gnat.  i have been very successful
in using machten to build tools that run as mac apps, unix apps(mac,
sun, sgi) using text and opengl and x/motif interfaces using it.  i
recently ran 3.5 gb of imagery and terrain data through the tools which
run under machten, not a single burp!  of course thats not to say there
were not burps during development, of course there were, and yes
machten took my mac down a few times, but to me thats better then
having it down ALL the time and working in a unix environemnt.

jim 

In article <381B0431.B8B030AB@ionet.net>, Dave Taylor
<dtaylor@ionet.net> wrote:

> Matthew Heaney wrote:
> > 
> > In article <3819A44A.9F5E6B97@maths.unine.ch> , Gautier
> > <Gautier.deMontmollin@maths.unine.ch>  wrote:
> > 
> > > A propos... is there a _completely free_ downloadable
> > > Ada95 solution (e.g. a shell+gnat) for MacOS ?
> > 
> > Not for MacOS.  I use LinuxPPC, with a home-grown port of GNAT v3.11p.
> > Monitor the gnat-list for a (non-ACT) port of v3.12p to LinuxPPC.
> > 
> > <http://www.linuxppc.com/>
> > <http://www.linuxppc.org/>
> > <http://www.gnuada.org/alt.html>
> > 
> > There may be a GNAT port available soon for Debian GNU/Linux.
> > 
> > I actually prefer the Linux environment, since there's never any
> > conflict with MacOS (no crashes, etc), and I get a real Meta key, which
> > makes emacs use a lot easier.
> > 
> > I was never happy with the support I got from Tenon anyway.  Apps
> > weren't ported to their shell; the shell would crash and bring down my
> > machine; email asking for help went unanswered.
> > 
> > My life would be a lot simpler if I'd just give in and buy a Wintel box,
> > or switch to C++.  But I prefer to tilt at windmills, so I struggle to
> > use Ada95 on a Mac...  Oh, well.
> > 
> > Things will be easier once ACT makes public versions of their LinuxPPC
> > port available, but that probably won't be at least until v3.13p.
> > 
> 
> I agree with everything that Matt said above.
> 
> Dave Taylor