Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[Bill Findlay]

I want to buy a nice new Power Mac G4 dual processor,
and I want to use GNAT without having to log in to a
remote server.

Has anyone any experience of running GNAT under an
x86 emulator, such as Virtual PC, on a Mac?

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[David Starner]

Bill Findlay <wf@dcs.gla.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:wf-3107012056570001@wyre.dcs.gla.ac.uk...
> I want to buy a nice new Power Mac G4 dual processor,
> and I want to use GNAT without having to log in to a
> remote server.
>
> Has anyone any experience of running GNAT under an
> x86 emulator, such as Virtual PC, on a Mac?

GNAT will run on the Power Mac. I don't believe there's a supported (and I
mean even by one garage programmer) port to the Mac OS, though. Depending on
your goals, you might want to consider dual-booting with Linux and running
GNAT there. Another alternative, that isn't currently feasible, but should
be soon, is running a GCC snapshot with support for Mac OS X and GNAT.
Neither the Mac OS X people, nor the GNAT people have fully merged their
sources with mainstream, but hopefully in a month or two both will have. It
won't be the utmost in stability, but you will probably be able to find a
snapshot stable enough to play around with.

I don't see any reason why running GNAT under an x86 emulator would be any
different from running any other command-line program under an x86 emulator,
if that's they way you chose to go.

--
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
"The pig -- belongs -- to _all_ mankind!" - Invader Zim

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[DuckE]

> GNAT there. Another alternative, that isn't currently feasible, but should
> be soon, is running a GCC snapshot with support for Mac OS X and GNAT.
> Neither the Mac OS X people, nor the GNAT people have fully merged their
> sources with mainstream, but hopefully in a month or two both will have.
It
> won't be the utmost in stability, but you will probably be able to find a
> snapshot stable enough to play around with.

Don't hold your breath on GNAT sources merging with GCC, this has been on
the "very soon now" list for quite some time.

SteveD
>
> I don't see any reason why running GNAT under an x86 emulator would be any
> different from running any other command-line program under an x86
emulator,
> if that's they way you chose to go.
>
> --
> David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
> "The pig -- belongs -- to _all_ mankind!" - Invader Zim
>
>

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[David Starner]

DuckE <nospam_steved94@home.com> wrote in message
news:uf4a7.13825$Ke4.9221095@news1.sttln1.wa.home.com...
> Don't hold your breath on GNAT sources merging with GCC, this has been on
> the "very soon now" list for quite some time.

But it went from "We're working on doing this" to "Any day now" just a
couple months ago.

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[DuckE]

"David Starner" <dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org> wrote in message
news:9kakis$gt8$1@news-central.tiac.net...
> DuckE <nospam_steved94@home.com> wrote in message
> news:uf4a7.13825$Ke4.9221095@news1.sttln1.wa.home.com...
> > Don't hold your breath on GNAT sources merging with GCC, this has been
on
> > the "very soon now" list for quite some time.
>
> But it went from "We're working on doing this" to "Any day now" just a
> couple months ago.
>
>

Here is a posting from this newsgroup dated November 19, 1999:

  In article <38359C2A.D80F50C5@worldnet.fr>,
    Stephane Carrez <stcarrez@worldnet.fr> wrote:
  > Hi!
  >
  > Does anybody know if Gnat 3.12 has been ported to GCC 2.95?

  GNAT 3.12 is not compatible with GCC 2.95, and a lot of work
  would be required to build a version of 3.12 with this version
  of GCC. Furthermore it would not work well, there are a
  significant number of GCC bugs that are fixed in the Ada
  Core patched version of GCC 2.8.1 that are not yet fixed
  in GCC 2.95.

  The plan is that everything will be merged for GCC 3.0, and
  at that point GNAT will be compatible with the new GCC 3.0.
  Richard Kenner has merged most of the GCC 2.8.1 stuff into
  the new GCC tree, so we are getting nearer to this point.

When I read this, and a few postings that followed, it was my impression
GNAT
would be merged into GCC before summer of 2000.  Guess what.

Like I said, don't hold your breath.  I wouldn't be suprised if it didn't
show up
until summer 2002.

SteveD

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[Robert Dewar]

"DuckE" <nospam_steved94@home.com> wrote in message news:<4fca7.14869$Ke4.9825918@news1.sttln1.wa.home.com>...
> Like I said, don't hold your breath.  I wouldn't be suprised if it 
> didn't show up until summer 2002.

Our schedule has a version of GNAT Pro based on GCC 3.0x long before
then, and we would expect that the public version will also be
available well before then. We still have some residual problems,
mostly with exception handling, but they should be resolved fairly
soon (since we have to move to the gcc exception handling in any
case on some of our ports).

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[Robert Dewar]

"DuckE" <nospam_steved94@home.com> wrote in message news:<uf4a7.13825$Ke4.9221095@news1.sttln1.wa.home.com>...
> Don't hold your breath on GNAT sources merging with GCC, this has
> been on the "very soon now" list for quite some time.

This is not the issue at all for the Mac. Jim Hopper has the latest
sources, but there are considerable technical difficulties to do with
gcc on OS/X (rather than GNAT).

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[Laurent Valdes]

Bill Findlay <wf@dcs.gla.ac.uk> wrote:

> I want to buy a nice new Power Mac G4 dual processor,
> and I want to use GNAT without having to log in to a
> remote server.
> 
> Has anyone any experience of running GNAT under an
> x86 emulator, such as Virtual PC, on a Mac?

Because GNAT exists on linux, because I have tried Linux on Virtual PC
4.0, it will surely work. But the best solution is to recompile GNAT on
Mac OS X or to use a BSD distribution.
-- 
La plupart des gens ne voient pas l'utilit� d'un ordinateur.
Jusqu'� ce qu'ils aient un ordi, pas un PC.
-+- in "La guerre des mondes" -+-

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[Robert Dewar]

valdesl@wanadoo.fr (Laurent Valdes) wrote in message news:<1ey1y51.2nh37f9n8d8mN%valdesl@wanadoo.fr>...
> But the best solution is to recompile GNAT on
> Mac OS X 

That's misleading, in fact the Mac OS X port is quite tricky
(ask Jim Hopper!) and is much more than just a recompilation!

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[Dale Stanbrough]

Robert Dewar wrote:

> That's misleading, in fact the Mac OS X port is quite tricky
> (ask Jim Hopper!) and is much more than just a recompilation!

What are the tricky bits? I know that Apple's implementation of
the pthread library is a bit shaky, but i really don't know much
more than that.

Dale

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[Laurent Valdes]

Dale Stanbrough <dale@cs.rmit.edu.au> wrote:

> Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> > That's misleading, in fact the Mac OS X port is quite tricky
> > (ask Jim Hopper!) and is much more than just a recompilation!
> 
> What are the tricky bits? I know that Apple's implementation of
> the pthread library is a bit shaky,

It haves to change. But you can use C-threads.

> but i really don't know much
> more than that.

I think almost every program can compile on Mac OS X depending on the
fact that it will not use special elements like X-Window or others(like
P-Threads).

-- 
TN : D�sol� mais cette expression n'a aucun sens ...
SP : Il est informaticien, alors, tant que tu compiles pas,
Ses paroles n'ont aucun sens...
-+-SP in Guide du Mac. Pervers:Bien Compiler Son Informaticien-+-

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[Bill Findlay]

In article <5ee5b646.0108122056.2e61fad3@posting.google.com>,
dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) wrote:

> That's misleading, in fact the Mac OS X port is quite tricky
> (ask Jim Hopper!) and is much more than just a recompilation!

Does that imply that Jim is working on an OS X port?

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[jim]

In article <5ee5b646.0108122056.2e61fad3@posting.google.com>, Robert
Dewar <dewar@gnat.com> wrote:

> That's misleading, in fact the Mac OS X port is quite tricky
> (ask Jim Hopper!) and is much more than just a recompilation!

there are a whole team of us working on this port right now.  myself,
alan and andrew reynolds, Stephen J. Bespalko, John Matthews, and
others who i am probably forgetting off the top of my head.  in
addition Stan Shebs at apple who is the keeper of the gcc 3.0 port is
also working with us.  we have also been talking to the apple pthreads
team.   In addition the folks at ACT have supplied us with gnat sources
and answers to some of our questions (those which were not apple
related)

we have had to do a number of things to the gcc port to make it support
gnat.  there were a few shortcuts taken in apples port of gcc that have
the backend calling the front end.  and while this works fine for the
c, and c++ front ends it was intended for and seems to work for
fortran, it doesnt work at all for ada.  so Stan, Alan, Andrew, and
myself have made changes to gcc to try to fix some of these.  we have
fixed a few of them but we are not done yet.  seems each time we get
past one of these another crops up. 

we also had to add trampoline support to apples gcc as it was never
made to work on the os x port for any language.  so nested functions
never worked in apples gcc, but they will in 3.0 if you have the patch
now.  Stan is going to get it into the mainline sources.  right now we
are working on another gcc problem.  we succeeded in building a gnat1,
but it won't bootstrap which we are working on.

Ptheads is another matter, apples implementation of pthreads is not
complete. However the apple folks are willing to look at adding what we
need and one of the team is corresponding with them about it.  In the
short term we have fsu threads ported so we will simply have to use
that in the short term.

i was off work on disability leave oever the summer and just got back
to work after getting the use of my arm back.  the upshot of this is
that i have been working on this at a reduced rate working one handed
until recently.  The Reynolds brothers have taken over the lead on
getting the gcc problems fixed in the last month or so while i was
recovering from getting my elbow cut up.  

we have set up a public mailing list for those who want to be kept up
to date with whats going on.  its at:

http://www.lists.apple.com/cgi-bin/mwf/board_show.pl?id=3&pg=2

apple is publicising it on there system and making it easy to get to
but its being hosted with the kind support of George Washington
University and Mike Feldman.  we have a developers list as well but we
are trying to keep people off that unless they can help with some phase
of this.

once we get the basic compiler going we will have a lot of work on the
bindings to carbon coco etc.  

its not near as neat as it would be if we had a gcc that was complete. 
but with the help of stan shebs and the reynolds brothers we are
getting there.

best jim

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[jim]

In article <5ee5b646.0108122056.2e61fad3@posting.google.com>, Robert
Dewar <dewar@gnat.com> wrote:

> That's misleading, in fact the Mac OS X port is quite tricky
> (ask Jim Hopper!) and is much more than just a recompilation!

there are a whole team of us working on this port right now.  myself,
Alan and Andrew reynolds, Stephen J. Bespalko, John Matthews, and
others who i am probably forgetting off the top of my head.  in
addition Stan Shebs at apple who is the keeper of the gcc 3.0 port is
also working with us.  we have also been talking to the apple pthreads
team.   In addition the folks at ACT have supplied us with gnat sources
and answers to some of our questions (those which were not apple
related)

we have had to do a number of things to the gcc port to make it support
gnat.  there were a few shortcuts taken in apples port of gcc that have
the backend calling the front end.  and while this works fine for the
c, and c++ front ends it was intended for and seems to work for
fortran, it doesnt work at all for ada.  so Stan, Alan, Andrew, and
myself have made changes to gcc to try to fix some of these.  we have
fixed a few of them but we are not done yet.  seems each time we get
past one of these another crops up. 

we also had to add trampoline support to apples gcc as it was never
made to work on the os x port for any language.  so nested functions
never worked in apples gcc, but they will in 3.0 if you have the patch
now.  Stan is going to get it into the mainline sources.  right now we
are working on another gcc problem.  we succeeded in building a gnat1,
but it won't bootstrap which we are working on.

Ptheads is another matter, apples implementation of pthreads is not
complete. However the apple folks are willing to look at adding what we
need and one of the team is corresponding with them about it.  In the
short term we have fsu threads ported so we will simply have to use
that in the short term.

i was off work on disability leave oever the summer and just got back
to work after getting the use of my arm back.  the upshot of this is
that i have been working on this at a reduced rate working one handed
until recently.  The Reynolds brothers have taken over the lead on
getting the gcc problems fixed in the last month or so while i was
recovering from getting my elbow cut up.  

we have set up a public mailing list for those who want to be kept up
to date with whats going on.  its at:

http://www.lists.apple.com/cgi-bin/mwf/board_show.pl?id=3&pg=2

apple is publicising it on there system and making it easy to get to
but its being hosted with the kind support of George Washington
University and Mike Feldman.  we have a developers list as well but we
are trying to keep people off that unless they can help with some phase
of this.

once we get the basic compiler going we will have a lot of work on the
bindings to carbon coco etc.  

its not near as neat as it would be if we had a gcc that was complete. 
but with the help of stan shebs and the reynolds brothers we are
getting there.

best jim

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[Bill Findlay]

In article <1ey1y51.2nh37f9n8d8mN%valdesl@wanadoo.fr>, valdesl@wanadoo.fr
(Laurent Valdes) wrote:

> 
> Because GNAT exists on linux, because I have tried Linux on Virtual PC
> 4.0, it will surely work.

Hmm. I am old (and wise ??) enough in the way of software
to detect a non-sequitur here.

You may be right, but assertion does not make it so,
and I asked for experience. I have been told in private
email that x86 GNAT works under Linux on MacOS 9 using
the Blue Label PowerEmulator by Lismore Software Systems.

> But the best solution is to recompile GNAT on
> Mac OS X or to use a BSD distribution.

Indeed, GNAT on MacOS X is what I really want,
but those who know make clear their view that
creating it is not a simple matter.

Re: Running x86 Linux GNAT on MacOS under Virtual PC

[jim]

easiest way to run gnat on os x rihgt now is to get codebuilder from
tenon which runs fine under classic environement.  however i know mike
feldman uses the windows version of gnat under virtual pc.

jim