Re: New Version of AVLAda9x

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <KAPLAN.94Oct28090040@itchy.cs.umass.edu>,
Alan & <kaplan@cs.umass.edu> wrote:
>
>Pardon the dumb question, but what exactly is "AVLAda9x"?  How does it 
>compare to GNAT 9x?
>
The "AVL" stands for Arthur Vargas Lopes. Arthur got his doctorate at
GW in 1992, under my supervision. He is the author of much of the
original SmallAda/DOS, and of the editor and help engine in GW-Ada/Ed-DOS.

AVLAda9x is a project he has developed on his own since he returned to
Brazil. It is a fast compiler for a subset of Ada 9X, generating
SmallAda-ish P-code which is then interpreted. The subset is growing;
as was the case with SmallAda, Arthur concentrated on concurrency issues
before encapsulation and modularity. His system has passed a number
(I do not know how many) of the ACVC-9X-basic tests, and he has 
successfully compiled most of the examples from my intoductory
Ada textbook (Feldman/Koffman).

The editor/environment in this system is very similar to SmallAda and
GW-Ada/Ed-DOS. When Arthur sent this stuff up to me, I encouraged
him to put it on the net to get feedback and exposure. It is a long way
from full Ada 9X, but its subset is growing every day.

Arthur intends this as an educational system, with which neophytes
can get started with _very_ low investment - like SmallAda, it will run
on a 286 (even Ada/Ed requires a 386/486).

GNAT, on the other hand, is much more than an educational project;
it is a real compiler that uses the gcc back end to produce real
executables. There's not much to compare - we are talking about
an apple and an orange here.

My only connection to Arthur's nice little system is that Arthur
was my student and we developed a couple of other neat things 
(SmallAda, GW-Ada/Ed) together. He feels kind of isolated in Brazil, 
and would love to get feedback from y'all by e-mail. Give it a try.

Mike Feldman
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Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
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