From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,3869f0598191b11d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!wns13feed!worldnet.att.net!63.223.4.70!c01.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!d9c68f36!not-for-mail Message-ID: <40FE607F.6040702@noplace.com> From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 (OEM-HPQ-PRS1C03) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Porting ADA source References: <40FBBB16.8050206@noplace.com> <40fd03b4$1_1@baen1673807.greenlnk.net> <40FD0932.5080604@noplace.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 12:24:35 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 165.247.65.53 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net 1090412675 165.247.65.53 (Wed, 21 Jul 2004 05:24:35 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 05:24:35 PDT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2314 Date: 2004-07-21T12:24:35+00:00 List-Id: Its all rather hypothetical, considering we don't really know what the whole situation is. I naturally agree that if one builds a system and thinks there is a potential need to port, one ought to design in the portability from the start. (Isolate the dependencies at a low level). I also would agree that if a system has a long and profitable future ahead of it, one might be wise to look at a porting situation as an opportunity to fix things that were not designed for portability (or other structural problems that may exist). My observation would be that there is a large class of systems where there might be some generally useful capabilities that someone wants to preserve for some relatively small body of users and are therefore porting them to more available hardware, but the systems just plain aren't worth any significan effort to do it "right". Gold plating on systems like this is mostly a waste of resources and I like to see ways of avoiding building Brick Outhouses when this comes up. It happens far more frequently than cases where there is some immensely valuable and profitable tool that is worth investing some redesign effort in. MDC Robert I. Eachus wrote: > > I'll second Randy on this first. Quick and dirty gets to "sort of > working" faster, but doing it right seems to get to working faster, and > definitely gets to no bugs much faster. > > However, there is an issue here that may require living with two > versions for a long-time: the need to compile using the DEC Ada compiler > which AFAIK is Ada 83 only. I believe that GNAT is available for some > Alpha OSes. (I don't know which Unix variant this is.) > > I think that the right path forward would be to migrate the code to > GNAT, then use the GNAT version on the Alpha system. It may be a lot > simpler than any other approach, and it certainly should reduce the > support costs going forward. > -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m o d c @ a m o g c n i c . r "All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for." --Logan Pearsall Smith ======================================================================