GNAT for Mac?

GNAT for Mac?

[Francesco Stiffoni]

GNAT, why there's not a port for Macintosh?

-- 
Francesco Stiffoni
University of Venice
Linguistic Department
Laboratory of Computational Linguistic

Re: GNAT for Mac?

[Gene McCulley]

In article <fstiffo-1711940828560001@157.138.55.12>, fstiffo@unive.it (Francesco Stiffoni) writes:
|> GNAT, why there's not a port for Macintosh?

Did you send this question to gnat-report@cs.nyu.edu also?  If not, you should.

 It seems to me that GNAT for Mac will not be an easy thing to achieve, since
 GNAT needs GCC and there is not much support for GCC on the Mac.  From the Mac
 programming FAQ:
 1.3) Q: Where do I find a public domain C compiler for the Mac.
 Is there a GCC for the mac? What about the FSF boycott of Apple
 products?

 A: There is no really good solution for a "for-free" C development
 system for the Mac.  GCC has been ported, but requires the MPW shell and
 MPW assembler to run; these have to be bought from APDA.  There is a
 standalone port of GCC 1.37 on nic.switch.ch:software/mac/src/think_c.
 There was a freely available C compiler called Harvest C, which was
 somewhat unstable but usable for smaller programs; it was abandoned by
 the original author Eric W Sink because of a lack of time and later
 taken up by the TopSoft project.

 The FSF boycott of Apple products means they will not talk to you if you
 ask them for help in doing a Mac port, and they will not incorporate
 your changes into their main code base.  However, they still allow
 others to port GNU stuff to the Mac, and it has been done with most of
 the application-like GNU programs (bison, flex, perl (not really part of
 GNU), ...)

 gcc-1.37r14 V1.1 standalone is available for ftp at nic.switch.ch:
 software/mac/src/think_c.

 A fairly stable port of GCC 2.3.3 to MPW is available for ftp at
 atg.apple.com [anyone know the directory?].

 For those whose main interest is in developing only text based C/C++
 programs, using GCC under MacMiNT might be appropriate.  MacMiNT is a
 UNIX like operating system ported from the Atari ST which supports many
 freely available UNIX utilities like GCC, GDB, make, tcsh, byacc, perl,
 and more.  MacMiNT stuff can be found at on nic.switch.ch in
 'software/mac/src/macmint'.

So you would have to get GCC 2.6.0 running on Mac.  I don't know anything about
the Mac except what I have read in the FAQ, so I don't know how hard this would
be.

Re: GNAT for Mac?

[Laurent Gasser]

In article <fstiffo-1711940828560001@157.138.55.12>, fstiffo@unive.it (Francesco Stiffoni) writes:
|> GNAT, why there's not a port for Macintosh?

Gnus don't eat it easily?! :-)

Mainly because people at Free Software Foundation, pushing behind GNU
tools and compilers where religiously against Apple's licencing policy.

The subject is still sensible, but maybe not that much anymore.
-- 
Laurent Gasser (gasser@dma.epfl.ch)
Computers do not solve problems, they execute solutions.

I know very few ideas worth dying for, none is worth killing.

Re: GNAT for Mac?

[Robert Dewar]

"GNAT, why is there not a port for the MAC?"

because no one has done one! There is no technical reason why GCC and GNAT
cannot be ported to the Mac. Apple did a version 1 port of GCC, but did not
keep it up. I believe Cygnus may be working on a port of GCC version 2.

Re: GNAT for Mac?

[Robert Dewar]

Laurent Gasser is spreading a common piece of misinformation when he 
incorrectly conjectures that the lack of a MAC port of GCC (and hence
GNAT) is due to the LPF boycott of Apple (which is in any case, as far
as I know, ended).

The one and only reason that there is no version of GCC for GNAT is that
no one has done the port. There is nothing stopping anyone from doing
this port [were the boycott in place, the port would not be included
in the standard FSF distribution, but so what, lots of important ports
of GCC, including for example the popular EMX port for OS/2) are not
distributed by FSF. Of course it's nice to have everything in the main
distribution, but you can't in any case distribute what doesn't exist, 
and in this case it is more to the point to worry about how to get the
port to exist, than to worry about how it is distributed when it does
exist!

THe history is that there was a GCC version 1 port for the MAC, done I
think by someone at Apple. But this port ran under MPW, so it was of
limited use.

What is needed is a native port of GCC 2.6.2. As I noted in a previous
message, I believe there is some activity at Cygnus. If you want a port
of GCC there are three things you can do:

  1)  do it yourself, the most useful, but the most difficult alternative
  2)  let the folks at Apple know you really want a port
  3)  let the folks at Cygnus (gumby@cygnus.com) know that you really 
	want a port.

Note that Cygnus is interested in selling support for GCC, so your 
interest is more interesting to them if you are need to use MAC/GCC 
or MAC/GNAT for serious work requiring commercial support :-)

Re: GNAT for Mac?

[Stan Shebs]

In article <3albc4$9g3@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

   Laurent Gasser is spreading a common piece of misinformation when he 
   incorrectly conjectures that the lack of a MAC port of GCC (and hence
   GNAT) is due to the LPF boycott of Apple (which is in any case, as far
   as I know, ended).

I believe it's still officially in place.  I will consider it ended
when Apple's name is removed from the "fight look and feel" section of
the GCC manual.  I just looked at a bit of the change history, and
that section has changed substantially in the past few months, as
shown by our CVS repository, although none of the changes are
documented in GCC's ChangeLog.  For instance, Xerox is no longer
mentioned by name, even though the previous justification for
boycotting it was that although its lawsuit had been thrown out,
"Xerox has not said anything to indicate it wouldn't try again".
(Perhaps I missed a recent announcement?)

   The one and only reason that there is no version of GCC for GNAT is that
   no one has done the port. There is nothing stopping anyone from doing
   this port [were the boycott in place, the port would not be included
   in the standard FSF distribution, but so what, lots of important ports
   of GCC, including for example the popular EMX port for OS/2) are not
   distributed by FSF. Of course it's nice to have everything in the main
   distribution, but you can't in any case distribute what doesn't exist, 
   and in this case it is more to the point to worry about how to get the
   port to exist, than to worry about how it is distributed when it does
   exist!

This is all true, but from a practical point of view, maintaining
branches in parallel is very expensive and time-consuming.  It's very
easy for a casual change by an FSF maintainer to break a a port not
maintained by the FSF (it happened to me many times at Apple).  A
fully compatible native Mac port is more complex than for DOS or OS/2,
although it's probably simpler for Ada than for C (Mac C compilers
must support a number of exotic extensions to ANSI C).

   THe history is that there was a GCC version 1 port for the MAC, done I
   think by someone at Apple. But this port ran under MPW, so it was of
   limited use.

By moi, to be exact. :-) There is also a version 2 port to MPW, and
there are versions that run under Unix emulators like MacMiNT, so you
*can* get versions that don't need MPW, although they are not yet
sufficient for production use.

   Note that Cygnus is interested in selling support for GCC, so your 
   interest is more interesting to them if you are need to use MAC/GCC 
   or MAC/GNAT for serious work requiring commercial support :-)

Amen to that!  We're neither a charity, nonprofit, nor government
agency, so you have to wave actual dollars, in sufficient numbers to
fund whatever work you'd like to see.

Note also that if you're waiting for someone *else* to fund the work,
and they're waiting for *you* to fund the work, nothing gets accomplished.

							Stan Shebs
							Cygnus Support
							shebs@cygnus.com

Re: GNAT for Mac?

[Laurent Gasser]

In article <3albc4$9g3@gnat.cs.nyu.edu>, dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
|> THe history is that there was a GCC version 1 port for the MAC, done I
|> think by someone at Apple. But this port ran under MPW, so it was of
|> limited use.

I have a stand-alone GCC version 1.* for Mac (done by Johnatan Kimmit).
It does require the Mac OS headers of another compiler and I am not 
sure it is self-compiling.  It can be found on nic.switch.ch in 
folders of Think C.

A single person was working on a port of GCC 2.6* at Apple during free
time.  I vaguely remember a post of him saying he was now working at 
Cygnus.  If my memory doesn't fail me, he was sad that not enough
interest was coming from Mac users.  Most of the call for support were 
about Atari, or similar computers.  (At Cygnus, no call for support = 
no money for development.)

A commercial, multiplateform (68K and PPC) compiler like Metrowerks 
CodeWarrior including C, C++, and Pascal with 3 updates during the 
annual subscription comes for $99 for students.  Who will do better 
for less?

|> What is needed is a native port of GCC 2.6.2. As I noted in a previous
|> message, I believe there is some activity at Cygnus. If you want a port
|> of GCC there are three things you can do:
|> 
|>   1)  do it yourself, the most useful, but the most difficult alternative
|>   2)  let the folks at Apple know you really want a port
|>   3)  let the folks at Cygnus (gumby@cygnus.com) know that you really 
|> 	want a port.
|> 
|> Note that Cygnus is interested in selling support for GCC, so your 
|> interest is more interesting to them if you are need to use MAC/GCC 
|> or MAC/GNAT for serious work requiring commercial support :-)
|> 

If work done for GNU is not advertised by GNU, who will know about it?

-- 
Laurent Gasser (gasser@dma.epfl.ch)
Computers do not solve problems, they execute solutions.

I know very few ideas worth dying for, none is worth killing.

Re: GNAT for Mac?

[RonaldS60]

GCC on the Mac IS available under A/UX.  I think it is currently 
the latest version (or one version back) and from what gets on the 
net it compiles cleanly without many (if any) changes.

I don't know if FSF still has their "look and feel" boycott in 
place.  If they do and haven't boycotted MicroSoft then they are
being arbitrary (sounds better than hypocritical) since MS 
"hinted" to the COSE people that any violation of the Windows'
look and feel (under CDE) would have the MS Legal department
looking for court dates.  I think it's very nice that FSF has
the GNU stuff out there.  But if they want to not support some
platform for some (stated) reason they should apply the same
reason uniformly (or give us the real reason;-).


Ron
======================================================
Computers now make it possible to make more mistakes
more efficiently than ever before possible.
======================================================

Re: GNAT for Mac?

[Richard Kenner]

In article <3b1gjk$hip@newsbf01.news.aol.com> ronalds60@aol.com (RonaldS60) writes:
>I don't know if FSF still has their "look and feel" boycott in 
>place.  If they do and haven't boycotted MicroSoft then they are
>being arbitrary (sounds better than hypocritical) since MS 
>"hinted" to the COSE people that any violation of the Windows'
>look and feel (under CDE) would have the MS Legal department
>looking for court dates.

Microsoft may have "hinted", but Apple actually sued.  There's a big
difference between those two actions!

For the record, the boycott was called by the LPF, which is a separate
organization from the FSF; the FSF was merely supporting the boycott.

However, I've been told that the LPF board recently voted to drop the
boycott; I don't know any further details.

The original concern with Apple, of course, was that if "look and
feel" copyrights are valid, then free software is impossible.

Re: GNAT for Mac?

[Arthur Evans Jr]

In article <3b1gjk$hip@newsbf01.news.aol.com>  ronalds60@aol.com
(RonaldS60) wrote:

> GCC on the Mac IS available under A/UX.  I think it is currently 
> the latest version (or one version back) and from what gets on the 
> net it compiles cleanly without many (if any) changes.

That's interesting, but I'm not sure that it's very interesting.

APDA doesn't carry A/UX, saying that they carry only software needed by
developers.  Curious.

MacMall carries V3.01 of A/UX for $609.  I guess I just might buy this
if that cost were the only consideration, but I see other problems:

  - I suspect I would need another hard disk; I just don't have multi
    megabytes of unused space.  But disks are cheap now.

  - I would have to become a Unix SysAdmin.  Yucch!  Everyone I know who
    has gone that route complains bitterly about the time it takes.  I
    resent the cost in time more than the cost in money.

  - Informal word I've heard is that A/UX is a bit flaky.

  - By no stretch of the imagination can A/UX be considered a commercial
    success.  It's hard to imagine that ACT would regard a GNAT port to
    it as worth doing.  ACT?

Art Evans

Arthur Evans Jr, PhD        Phone: 412-963-0839
Ada Consulting              FAX:   412-963-0927
461 Fairview Road
Pittsburgh PA  15238-1933
evans@evans.pgh.pa.us