From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,3cfb384718eb4f7a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Markus Kuhn Subject: Re: Linux/POSIX packages for GNAT Date: 1998/02/23 Message-ID: <34F16525.17E166AA@cl.cam.ac.uk>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 327804061 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <34EEFF9C.1D01FA5D@stellar1.com> <1998Feb21.194544.1@eisner> <34ef8225.83906260@enews.newsguy.com> <34F007C5.7D9F2D7@cl.cam.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: Cambridge University, Computer Laboratory Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-02-23T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Robert Dewar wrote: > > < low-level access as well as an implementation of the full POSIX.5 > Ada API. Has this already been done somewhere or is any work on > this in progress? > > How widely implemented is the POSIX.5 API (standardized Ada versions > of the common Unix system calls) anyway? > >> > > Interesting to see these two paragraphs next to one another. The first > claims it is urgent to implement the full POSIX.5 Ada API. The second > asks how widely implemented this package is. > > Perhaps the question should be answered before the urgency is declared :-) In case it was not clear what I referred to: I am at the moment a quite experienced and happy programmer using a complete ISO C / POSIX.1 conforming development environment (Linux). I am seriously considering to switch to Ada95, but I will not consider Ada to be an attractive development language under Linux as long as I do not know how to get the same rich library/kernel functionality that I do currently have as a C programmer. The standard packages required by Ada95 RM are alone not sufficient for real Unix application development. In production quality application development, the functionality of the full Linux kernel API should be easily available. This includes the usual POSIX.1 functionality plus a number of not-yet-POSIX-standardized functions such as sockets and symlinks. Sure, I understand that I can always access any libc function via Ada95 interface pragmas, but it obviously would be much more convenient to have a native production quality Ada API such as POSIX.5 available. I have not yet found a large system (say a good high-performance HTTP server) completely written in Ada95 for Linux that would convince me that all the tools for doing such a project are already available for Linux. A well-supported Ada95 equivalent of the Linux libc seems to be the critical part. Markus -- Markus G. Kuhn, Security Group, Computer Lab, Cambridge University, UK email: mkuhn at acm.org, home page: