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From: kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: GNAT for OS/2 and general GNU questions ...
Date: 25 Mar 1995 22:09:33 GMT
Organization: New York University Ultracomputer Research Lab
Message-ID: <3l24at$iar@cmcl2.NYU.EDU>
References: <3l0eoq$kjb@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu>
 <3l1ppu$t2l@newsflash.concordia.ca>
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Date: 1995-03-25T22:09:33+00:00
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In article <3l1ppu$t2l@newsflash.concordia.ca> ct_oreg@vega.concordia.ca (Chris O'Regan) writes:
>Gcc is a frontend which calls the C/C++/Ada/Fortran/Pascal compiler. 

More precisely, it is a driver program, like "cc" on Unix, that calls
the appropriate sequences of compiler parts: cpp/cc1/as for C, cpp/cc1plus/as
for C++, gnat1/as for Ada, etc.

>>From what I understand, these compilers generate assembly language pseudocode.
>Gcc can then optimize this code and, finally, generate the machine-specific
>object file.  Gcc can also call the linker to create the machine-specific
>executable.

Not precisely, but close enough.

>Although I have not tried the GNU debuggers (gdb and xxgdb), I have
>heard that they will handle programs generated by GNAT, however, from what
>I understand, they will not display the Ada code.

No, that's not correct.  The source line numbers in the executable are
independent of the language or filetype, so it certainly does show
the Ada source.  What it does not currently do is accept commands
using Ada syntax for expressions and know about some Ada types.  You
also have to know something about how variable names are transformed.

But it's quite usuable for debugging Ada programs.  It has been used to
debug GNAT for quite a while now.