will ada always be supported by gcc?

will ada always be supported by gcc?

[leo.brewin]

Greetings,

I've been a long time user of Pascal and I'm worried that my compiler
of choice, gpc pascal for MacOSX, may fall over in the next release of
MacOSX. The good folks that have supported gpc Pascal over the years
are unlikely to do the job on an ongoing basis. So I need a plan B
which currently is to port my roughly 1 million lines of code to Ada.
My worry is that I might run into the same problem with Ada -- can I
be sure that Ada will continue to be part of the GCC compiler suite
for a long time?

Many thanks, Leo

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[anon]

Well since Adacore uses GCC backend for GNAT Ada, it should. Or at least 
until Ada 2020.

In <dbdd7b64-d7d6-4255-8baf-1c0af85bf2ad@t38g2000prg.googlegroups.com>, leo.brewin@internode.on.net writes:
>Greetings,
>
>I've been a long time user of Pascal and I'm worried that my compiler
>of choice, gpc pascal for MacOSX, may fall over in the next release of
>MacOSX. The good folks that have supported gpc Pascal over the years
>are unlikely to do the job on an ongoing basis. So I need a plan B
>which currently is to port my roughly 1 million lines of code to Ada.
>My worry is that I might run into the same problem with Ada -- can I
>be sure that Ada will continue to be part of the GCC compiler suite
>for a long time?
>
>Many thanks, Leo

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[John B. Matthews]

In article 
<dbdd7b64-d7d6-4255-8baf-1c0af85bf2ad@t38g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
 leo.brewin@internode.on.net wrote:

> I've been a long time user of Pascal and I'm worried that my compiler 
> of choice, gpc pascal for MacOSX, may fall over in the next release 
> of MacOSX. The good folks that have supported gpc Pascal over the 
> years are unlikely to do the job on an ongoing basis. So I need a 
> plan B which currently is to port my roughly 1 million lines of code 
> to Ada. My worry is that I might run into the same problem with Ada 
> -- can I be sure that Ada will continue to be part of the GCC 
> compiler suite for a long time?

Another hedge is to emulate a (possibly better) supported platform. I 
use VirtualBox <https://www.virtualbox.org/>.

-- 
John B. Matthews
trashgod at gmail dot com
<http://sites.google.com/site/drjohnbmatthews>

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Adam Beneschan]

On Nov 19, 6:15 pm, leo.bre...@internode.on.net wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I've been a long time user of Pascal and I'm worried that my compiler
> of choice, gpc pascal for MacOSX, may fall over in the next release of
> MacOSX. The good folks that have supported gpc Pascal over the years
> are unlikely to do the job on an ongoing basis. So I need a plan B
> which currently is to port my roughly 1 million lines of code to Ada.
> My worry is that I might run into the same problem with Ada -- can I
> be sure that Ada will continue to be part of the GCC compiler suite
> for a long time?

Well, since it's open source, I think you can save all the sources.
Then even if all the GCC and GNAT developers decide to quit tomorrow
and become stock brokers or musicians or whatever, you'll still have
the sources and should still be able to compile them, as long as
there's a C compiler available, which I think will be the case
forever.

                         -- Adam

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2011-11-21, Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com> wrote:
>
> Well, since it's open source, I think you can save all the sources.
> Then even if all the GCC and GNAT developers decide to quit tomorrow
> and become stock brokers or musicians or whatever, you'll still have
> the sources and should still be able to compile them, as long as
> there's a C compiler available, which I think will be the case
> forever.
>

You need a working Ada compiler to be able to compile the gcc Ada
front end as the majority of the Ada front end is written in Ada.

This is checked for as part of the configure script.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Ludovic Brenta]

leo.brewin@internode.on.net writes:
> I've been a long time user of Pascal and I'm worried that my compiler
> of choice, gpc pascal for MacOSX, may fall over in the next release of
> MacOSX. The good folks that have supported gpc Pascal over the years
> are unlikely to do the job on an ongoing basis. So I need a plan B
> which currently is to port my roughly 1 million lines of code to Ada.
> My worry is that I might run into the same problem with Ada -- can I
> be sure that Ada will continue to be part of the GCC compiler suite
> for a long time?

The short answer is: yes.

There are two main reasons for that.  First, because GCC is Free
Software, there will always be the possibility to recompile GCC from
sources, or to pay someone like me (:)) to do that for you.

Second, the Ada part of GCC is maintained by the company AdaCore, whose
customers use GNAT for projects with *very* long life cycles.  For
example, it is quite normal for avionics equipment (hardware and
software) to be supported for 20 years -- still only half the expected
life time of the aircraft containing said avionics equipment.  And I
wouldn't expect anyone to rewrite the controlling software of a working
nuclear power station "just because the language is old".

But I think your question really was: "can I be sure that Ada will
continue to be part of the GCC compiler suite *on MacOS X* for a long
time?"  I cannot answer that definitively; for starters, Apple's GCC
does not support Ada at all; the existing GNAT for MacOS X is pretty
much a community project, AFAICT, and so is no better and no worse than
GPC on Mac OS X.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Robert A Duff]

leo.brewin@internode.on.net writes:

> I've been a long time user of Pascal and I'm worried that my compiler
> of choice, gpc pascal for MacOSX, may fall over in the next release of
> MacOSX. The good folks that have supported gpc Pascal over the years
> are unlikely to do the job on an ongoing basis. So I need a plan B
> which currently is to port my roughly 1 million lines of code to Ada.

If you have a million lines of Pascal, I suspect it would be cheaper
to maintain the Pascal compiler yourself, or pay somebody to do so,
rather than converting it all to Ada.

Converting a large well-working program from one language to another
is rarely a good idea.

> My worry is that I might run into the same problem with Ada -- can I
> be sure that Ada will continue to be part of the GCC compiler suite
> for a long time?

Yes, I think GNAT will continue to exist for a long time.
I hope so, since I make a living maintaining GNAT and other
AdaCore products.

To answer your subject line, "will ada always be supported by gcc?":
I hope not ALWAYS.  ;-)  Surely 100 years from now, people will be using
much better programming languages than the ones we have now, including
Ada!

- Bob

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Simon Wright]

Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> writes:

> But I think your question really was: "can I be sure that Ada will
> continue to be part of the GCC compiler suite *on MacOS X* for a long
> time?"  I cannot answer that definitively; for starters, Apple's GCC
> does not support Ada at all; the existing GNAT for MacOS X is pretty
> much a community project, AFAICT, and so is no better and no worse
> than GPC on Mac OS X.
       ???

Darwin is a standard build option in GCC; you can buy support for a
Darwin GNAT from AdaCore or you can download the GPL version.

The GCC maintainers don't regard Darwin as a primary target (unlike
Linux). But it hasn't been a stopper so far.

At the moment I think the difficulties arise with Apple oddities and
even bugs: for example,

PR42554[1] is down to Apple's introduction and then deprecation of
"ranlib -c".

PR50678[2] is caused by Apple's stack unwinding having a mistaken view
of how registers are stored after a stack overflow, which only seems to
affect GNAT.

[1] http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=42554
[2] http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=50678

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Jerry]

On Nov 19, 7:15 pm, leo.bre...@internode.on.net wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I've been a long time user of Pascal and I'm worried that my compiler
> of choice, gpc pascal for MacOSX, may fall over in the next release of
> MacOSX. The good folks that have supported gpc Pascal over the years
> are unlikely to do the job on an ongoing basis. So I need a plan B
> which currently is to port my roughly 1 million lines of code to Ada.
> My worry is that I might run into the same problem with Ada -- can I
> be sure that Ada will continue to be part of the GCC compiler suite
> for a long time?
>
> Many thanks, Leo

You probably already know this, but just in case: If list traffic is
any indication, Free Pascal Compiler has many more users than GPC.
(But list traffic doesn't indicate OS use.) Also, check out p2ada if
you haven't already.

FWIW, I made the switch from Pascal several years ago, but didn't
convert most of my Pascal code because the switch to Ada sort of
coincided with beginning new projects. I got tired of switching to
different Pascal dialects (THINK Pascal, Codewarrior Pascal, GPC or
FPC) and decided I might as well just switch to Ada. If I had to run
the old Pascal code today I would have a problem. Not sure what I
would do but would probably get some old computers out of the closet
and see if they still run, or get an OS 9 emulator.

At least with Ada I feel (hope?) that obsolescence might be put at bay
at least with respect to the language if not the OS--I would hope
(again, that word) that at least I would be able to run Ada on Linux
or something.

Jerry

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Randy Brukardt]

"Robert A Duff" <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote in message 
news:wcchb1xjfic.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com...
> leo.brewin@internode.on.net writes:
...
> To answer your subject line, "will ada always be supported by gcc?":
> I hope not ALWAYS.  ;-)  Surely 100 years from now, people will be using
> much better programming languages than the ones we have now, including
> Ada!

Crazy optimist. ;-)

100 years from now, there will be lots of people maintaining Fortran and 
COBOL programs from the 1960s. And C programs from the 1970s and 80s. Not so 
sure about Ada programs, but that's probably because they break so rarely 
that it will be hard to keep expertise around.

Of course, it is possible that computers themselves will have taken over all 
of these jobs. In which case, it will be the people that are redundant. But 
I think it is more likely that little will have changed on that front 
(because little has changed in how programs are written in the 30 years I've 
been in this business).

                                           Randy.

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Adam Beneschan]

On Nov 21, 3:56 pm, "Randy Brukardt" <ra...@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
> "Robert A Duff" <bobd...@shell01.TheWorld.com> wrote in messagenews:wcchb1xjfic.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com...
>
> > leo.bre...@internode.on.net writes:
> ...
> > To answer your subject line, "will ada always be supported by gcc?":
> > I hope not ALWAYS.  ;-)  Surely 100 years from now, people will be using
> > much better programming languages than the ones we have now, including
> > Ada!
>
> Crazy optimist. ;-)
>
> 100 years from now, there will be lots of people maintaining Fortran and
> COBOL programs from the 1960s.

It's a little dated, but back in 1999 I heard a joke about a COBOL
programmer who got so frustrated fixing Y2K problems that he went nuts
and had himself cryogenically frozen and set it to wake him up in
2001.  But there was a Y2K bug in the cryogenic machine, and it didn't
wake him up, and he remained frozen until almost eight thousand years
later when some scientists unfroze him manually.  When he woke up, his
hosts showed him around the world of the future, and he was blown away
by all the technological advances that had taken place: no more cars,
because people could just teleport themselves wherever they wanted to
go, no more deadly diseases like cancer, frozen pizza that tasted
good, and many other things.  Naturally, the guy was really impressed
and told his hosts so.  "But I wonder, why did you pick this moment in
history to wake me up?"

"Because we have a Y10K problem coming up and we heard that you knew
COBOL."

                                -- Adam

(for the benefit of the two or three of you who haven't already heard
it)

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Patrick Jakubowski]

Really good joke. I like it very much.

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Sebastian Doht]

leo.brewin@internode.on.net schrieb:
> Greetings,
>
> I've been a long time user of Pascal and I'm worried that my compiler
> of choice, gpc pascal for MacOSX, may fall over in the next release of
> MacOSX. The good folks that have supported gpc Pascal over the years
> are unlikely to do the job on an ongoing basis. So I need a plan B
> which currently is to port my roughly 1 million lines of code to Ada.
> My worry is that I might run into the same problem with Ada -- can I
> be sure that Ada will continue to be part of the GCC compiler suite
> for a long time?
>
> Many thanks, Leo


I know it is a little bit off-topic on this group but have you 
considered using FreePascal (http://www.freepascal.org/) instead? It 
should be easier to port your GPC code and it is IMHO well supported and 
will be around for a while.

Greetz,

Sebastian

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:39:33 +0100, Ludovic Brenta  
<ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> a écrit:
> Second, the Ada part of GCC is maintained by the company AdaCore, whose
> customers use GNAT for projects with *very* long life cycles.
How much means “very long” in this sentence ?


-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”  [Epigrams on  
Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [Idem]
Java: Write once, Never revisit

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:38:52 +0100, Jerry <lanceboyle@qwest.net> a écrit:
> FWIW, I made the switch from Pascal several years ago, but didn't
> convert most of my Pascal code because the switch to Ada sort of
> coincided with beginning new projects. I got tired of switching to
> different Pascal dialects (THINK Pascal, Codewarrior Pascal, GPC or
> FPC) and decided I might as well just switch to Ada.
I decided the same for similar reasons too, when one day, FPC suddenly  
changed some semantic a weird way, above all, in contradiction with its  
documentation. I felt Ada, which is internationally standardized, may  
avoid such hazards.



-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”  [Epigrams on  
Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [Idem]
Java: Write once, Never revisit

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:07:10 +0100, Sebastian Doht <seb_doht@lycos.com> a  
écrit:
> I know it is a little bit off-topic on this group but have you  
> considered using FreePascal (http://www.freepascal.org/) instead? It  
> should be easier to port your GPC code
The way it evolves, the way in maintains its own bug for so long and the  
way its a mess with all the Pascal variant it supports via compiler  
options and the amount by which the meaning of a source may vary just  
depending on compiler option, I really believe the opposite: will be safer  
and easier with Ada. At least, if he made an error in the translation from  
Pascal to Ada, the Ada compiler will probably tell him at compile time.

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”  [Epigrams on  
Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [Idem]
Java: Write once, Never revisit

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Wed, 23 Nov 2011 04:00:17 +0100, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)  
<yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> a écrit:
> the Ada compiler will probably tell him  at compile time.
(oops, forget last words) while the FPC compiler surely wont, or a very  
little.


-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”  [Epigrams on  
Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [Idem]
Java: Write once, Never revisit

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Chad]

Many thanks for all the replies. I'm sold on the move to Ada. Given
that i) Ada is platform gnostic and ii) Ada will be available on at
least one platform for most of my working life I'm confident that I'll
have easy access to a working Ada compiler for many years to come.
This is very comforting. And I do like the look of Ada code. So, the
big conversion begins (and yes I will be using p2ada as a workhorse
but with lots of little sed-scripts to assist).

Cheers,
Leo

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Robert A Duff]

"Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> writes:

> Le Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:39:33 +0100, Ludovic Brenta
> <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> a écrit:
>> Second, the Ada part of GCC is maintained by the company AdaCore, whose
>> customers use GNAT for projects with *very* long life cycles.

> How much means “very long” in this sentence ?

Decades, in some cases.

- Bob

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Lucretia]

On Nov 23, 12:19 pm, Chad <leo.bre...@internode.on.net> wrote:
> Many thanks for all the replies. I'm sold on the move to Ada. Given
> that i) Ada is platform gnostic and ii) Ada will be available on at
> least one platform for most of my working life I'm confident that I'll
> have easy access to a working Ada compiler for many years to come.
> This is very comforting. And I do like the look of Ada code. So, the
> big conversion begins (and yes I will be using p2ada as a workhorse
> but with lots of little sed-scripts to assist).
>
> Cheers,
> Leo

The problem with Pascal is that Standard Pascal is limited (i.e.
structured BASIC for learning), everything else is a hack on top, with
each being incompatible with each other.

If I was you, I would look into interfacing Ada with your Pascal code.
Normally, Pascal passes params left to right (unlike C, which is r-to-
l
due to ...), Ada I would think would pass in a similar manner, might
not
be the same though. If not, might be worth looking into the compiler
to
extend it with Interfaces.Pascal (or GPC) and the param passing
mechanism,
so you can import Pascal procedures/functions as Ada subprograms.

e.g.

procedure Some_GPC_Thingy;
pragma import(Pascal, Some_GPC_Thingy);

Would be better than porting Pascal -> Ada.

Luke.

Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?

[Jerry]

On Nov 24, 11:08 am, Lucretia <laguest9...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 23, 12:19 pm, Chad <leo.bre...@internode.on.net> wrote:
>

> The problem with Pascal is that Standard Pascal is limited (i.e.
> structured BASIC for learning), everything else is a hack on top, with
> each being incompatible with each other.
>
> If I was you, I would look into interfacing Ada with your Pascal code.
> Normally, Pascal passes params left to right (unlike C, which is r-to-
> l
> due to ...), Ada I would think would pass in a similar manner, might
> not
> be the same though. If not, might be worth looking into the compiler
> to
> extend it with Interfaces.Pascal (or GPC) and the param passing
> mechanism,
> so you can import Pascal procedures/functions as Ada subprograms.
>
> e.g.
>
> procedure Some_GPC_Thingy;
> pragma import(Pascal, Some_GPC_Thingy);
>
> Would be better than porting Pascal -> Ada.
>
> Luke.

I have interfaced Ada to Pascal (I can't remember if it was GPC or
FPC) assuming C conventions, i.e.,


procedure Some_GPC_Thingy;
pragma import(C, Some_GPC_Thingy);

Jerry