GNAT on Mac

GNAT on Mac

[Doug Smith]

For you Macintosh owners who might think of using some emulation software
to run GNAT, let me share a little information:

Insignia Solutions sells a DOS/Windows emulator for Macs/Performas/Power Macs.
Although not stated on the box (I couldn't find it), this is an emulation of
the 80286 instruction set...bzzzzzzzt ... not for GNAT you don't!

A discussion with Insignia tech support revealed that they will be releasing
an 80486 emulator for the Power Macs "real soon now" (April-June).

I'm not sure how practical this really is for writing code or even just playing
with GNAT on you Power Mac. I paid $169 for SoftWindows (and will be returning
it for a refund within the 30 day limit). If someone who owns a Power Mac can
invest the money when the 486 emulator comes out, I would like to know if the
GNAT compiler could be run on the SoftWindows' product (and how well).

Doug Smith
dsmith@clark.net

Doug Smith
dsmith@clark.net

Re: GNAT on Mac

[Laurent Gasser]

In article <dsmith-2103950031170001@dsmith-ppp.clark.net>, dsmith@clark.net (Doug Smith) writes:
|> For you Macintosh owners who might think of using some emulation software
|> to run GNAT, let me share a little information:
|> 
|> Insignia Solutions sells a DOS/Windows emulator for Macs/Performas/Power Macs.
|> Although not stated on the box (I couldn't find it), this is an emulation of
|> the 80286 instruction set...bzzzzzzzt ... not for GNAT you don't!
|> 
|> A discussion with Insignia tech support revealed that they will be releasing
|> an 80486 emulator for the Power Macs "real soon now" (April-June).
|> 
|> I'm not sure how practical this really is for writing code or even just playing
|> with GNAT on you Power Mac. I paid $169 for SoftWindows (and will be returning
|> it for a refund within the 30 day limit). If someone who owns a Power Mac can
|> invest the money when the 486 emulator comes out, I would like to know if the
|> GNAT compiler could be run on the SoftWindows' product (and how well).
|> 
|> Doug Smith
|> dsmith@clark.net
|> 
|> Doug Smith
|> dsmith@clark.net

For a price similar to the emulator I got the Houdini card (a 486 at
66MHz on PowerMac 6100/66).  It is a perfectly compatible DOS machine 
which can run GNAT: I have it running all the examples.  It is
available since yesterday at least ;-)

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

Re: GNAT on Mac

[Theodore Dennison]

Doug Smith <dsmith@clark.net> wrote:

> For you Macintosh owners who might think of using some emulation software
> to run GNAT, let me share a little information:
> 
..
> A discussion with Insignia tech support revealed that they will be releasing
> an 80486 emulator for the Power Macs "real soon now" (April-June).
> 


I know this is way, WAY off topic, but how fast are these 486 emulations? Do
they think it will be faster or slower than a real 486?

T.E.D.

Re: GNAT on Mac

[Vladimir Vukicevic]

I think that the original idea of porting gnat to the Mac was to have
a freely available Ada compiler runing natively on the Mac. While
using SoftPC or SoftWindows is a possibility, it wouldn't enable you
to make any macintosh software, or take advantage of the macintosh's
interface. And, after all, who wants to use DOS or Windows?

	- Vladimir

Re: GNAT on Mac

[Robert Dewar]

One additional problem here (trying to run GNAT in emulation mode) is
that Windows is of course a 16-bit environment basically. So if the
product emulates Windows in a 486 environment, it is basically emulating
16-bit stuff anyway. Presumably it can support the kind of 32-bit
extender technology that DJGPP uses, but one can't be sure of this
without trying it out.

GNAT on Mac

[Luke A. Guest]

Just wondering, for when I get to this point, is there integration into
Xcode? I know there is no public sdk for plugging into Xcode, but I'm
wondering if there is any as I saw in another thread someone mentioned
Xcode in the same sentence as GNAT.

Luke

Re: GNAT on Mac

[David Botton]

There was in the early days of XCode, I do not think there currently has been any work on it. You may want to ask on the Mac for Ada list - GNAT-OSX at HERMES.GWU.EDU