* GNAT for Mac? @ 1994-11-16 23:28 Francesco Stiffoni 1994-11-18 14:13 ` Gene McCulley ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Francesco Stiffoni @ 1994-11-16 23:28 UTC (permalink / raw) GNAT, why there's not a port for Macintosh? -- Francesco Stiffoni University of Venice Linguistic Department Laboratory of Computational Linguistic ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: GNAT for Mac? 1994-11-16 23:28 GNAT for Mac? Francesco Stiffoni @ 1994-11-18 14:13 ` Gene McCulley 1994-11-18 17:56 ` Laurent Gasser 1994-11-19 7:15 ` Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Gene McCulley @ 1994-11-18 14:13 UTC (permalink / raw) 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. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: GNAT for Mac? 1994-11-16 23:28 GNAT for Mac? Francesco Stiffoni 1994-11-18 14:13 ` Gene McCulley @ 1994-11-18 17:56 ` Laurent Gasser 1994-11-19 17:07 ` Robert Dewar 1994-11-19 7:15 ` Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: Laurent Gasser @ 1994-11-18 17:56 UTC (permalink / raw) 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. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: GNAT for Mac? 1994-11-18 17:56 ` Laurent Gasser @ 1994-11-19 17:07 ` Robert Dewar 1994-11-20 22:05 ` Stan Shebs 1994-11-21 18:13 ` Laurent Gasser 0 siblings, 2 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1994-11-19 17:07 UTC (permalink / raw) 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 :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: GNAT for Mac? 1994-11-19 17:07 ` Robert Dewar @ 1994-11-20 22:05 ` Stan Shebs 1994-11-24 7:50 ` RonaldS60 1994-11-21 18:13 ` Laurent Gasser 1 sibling, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: Stan Shebs @ 1994-11-20 22:05 UTC (permalink / raw) 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 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: GNAT for Mac? 1994-11-20 22:05 ` Stan Shebs @ 1994-11-24 7:50 ` RonaldS60 1994-11-24 11:35 ` Richard Kenner 1994-11-28 16:00 ` Arthur Evans Jr 0 siblings, 2 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: RonaldS60 @ 1994-11-24 7:50 UTC (permalink / raw) 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. ====================================================== ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: GNAT for Mac? 1994-11-24 7:50 ` RonaldS60 @ 1994-11-24 11:35 ` Richard Kenner 1994-11-28 16:00 ` Arthur Evans Jr 1 sibling, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Richard Kenner @ 1994-11-24 11:35 UTC (permalink / raw) 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. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: GNAT for Mac? 1994-11-24 7:50 ` RonaldS60 1994-11-24 11:35 ` Richard Kenner @ 1994-11-28 16:00 ` Arthur Evans Jr 1 sibling, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Arthur Evans Jr @ 1994-11-28 16:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Cc: evans 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 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: GNAT for Mac? 1994-11-19 17:07 ` Robert Dewar 1994-11-20 22:05 ` Stan Shebs @ 1994-11-21 18:13 ` Laurent Gasser 1 sibling, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Laurent Gasser @ 1994-11-21 18:13 UTC (permalink / raw) 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. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: GNAT for Mac? 1994-11-16 23:28 GNAT for Mac? Francesco Stiffoni 1994-11-18 14:13 ` Gene McCulley 1994-11-18 17:56 ` Laurent Gasser @ 1994-11-19 7:15 ` Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1994-11-19 7:15 UTC (permalink / raw) "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. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1994-11-28 16:00 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 10+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 1994-11-16 23:28 GNAT for Mac? Francesco Stiffoni 1994-11-18 14:13 ` Gene McCulley 1994-11-18 17:56 ` Laurent Gasser 1994-11-19 17:07 ` Robert Dewar 1994-11-20 22:05 ` Stan Shebs 1994-11-24 7:50 ` RonaldS60 1994-11-24 11:35 ` Richard Kenner 1994-11-28 16:00 ` Arthur Evans Jr 1994-11-21 18:13 ` Laurent Gasser 1994-11-19 7:15 ` Robert Dewar
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