Re: New to ada, a few questions

[Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <n9C39.216$PE6.18962@wagner.videotron.net>, "akhar" <akhar@videotron.ca> writes:
>> * Ada provides calling conventions and several useful conversions
>>    for calling functions compiled in C. You cannot use stdio.h in Ada.
>>    Ada does not understand C source syntax, and Ada has no standard
>>    preprocessor.
> this means I have to link to  a DLL ?

No, but you have to compile each module with its own compiler (C or Ada)
and then link them together.  If you have reason to prefer to use some
mechanism like a DLL/Shared Object/Shareable image you can do that too.
Ada compilers are just like any other compiler in most cases for the
top-down view -- they take in text files and put out object files.

>> * Interfacing with C++ or objective C is possible. The simplest way
>>    is to treat them both as C programs. More complex approaches are
>>    somewhat compiler specific.
> same thing here?

Same thing as what ?

>> * Ada is available for embedded systems, but not for 8 bit
> microcontrollers.
> where ca I get more info on this?

Try http://www.adapower.com

>> * Ada "threading" works very well. It is actually defined in the more
>>    general terms of concurrent programming, and is often implemented
>>    using threads. Compared to Java, Ada's concurrency model is extremely
>>    robust and sophisticated.
> Tell me more about concurrent programming, how does it interface to the OS
> threading model. I read this is the main reason it is used for realtime
> applications , but cannot find any tutorials.

If your OS has a threading model, it interfaces to it in any fashion
that can achieve the specified behavior from the Ada Reference Manual,
but typically it is better to learn this from a textbook.  There are
Ada compilers that depend entirely on OS services for their tasking,
and there are Ada compilers that are entirely independent of OS tasking
services.  The emphasis in Ada is that your source code is portable
between various operating systems and various compilers on those operating
systems because your tasking/threading/multiprogramming support is a
guarantee from the Ada implementation without you having to be concerned
with how to deal with the operating system.