Re: understanding runtime support

[mjsilva@scriptoriumdesigns.com]

On Monday, May 14, 2012 11:48:08 PM UTC-7, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> <mjsilva@sc...com> wrote in message 
> news:10099625.0.1337029342748.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@yneh4...
> > Sadly, there does not seem to be a cookbook as to how to create such a 
> > bare metal port for other devices/families.
> 
> Nothing "sad" about it; it's unavoidable. There is no "cookbook" to creating 
> bare machine versions; they have to be tailored to the device and board 
> capabilities. 

Again, I look at the numbers of Ada-suitable microcontrollers being shipped (tens of billions), and there's no clear way to get Ada on most of them.  That seems extremely short-sighted for the growth of Ada into markets it could become a strong player in.  

I look back on the MIL-STD-1750A and think if Ada was put on that (and I remember the claims about what a small runtime was required), how hard could it be to put it on modern devices of equal or greater capacity?

So what's involved in e.g. Ada with Ravenscar tasking, no files, no propagated exceptions?  I would expect something like N Ada stub subprograms that need to be customized for the hardware, along with some data objects.  These subprograms would be hooked up to a hardware timer and whatever other hardware subsystems necessary.  

Only a very few dedicated souls will read through existing source to figure out a way to port that source, but if a cookbook existed, similar to the doc for an RTOS that tells what each stub subprogram must be coded to provide, and defines each required data object, I suspect Ada would suddenly start appearing on a lot more varied hardware, and start getting noticed by a lot more people.  And that would be a Very Good Thing IMO.