Will GNAT work with WIN32s for Windows 3.1?

Will GNAT work with WIN32s for Windows 3.1?

[Keith Arthurs]

I was wondering if GNAT will work if you have windows 3.11 and the
win32s 32 bit extensions?  

Thanks in advance,
Keith Arthurs
karthurs@aol.com  http://users.aol.com/karthurs/

Re: Will GNAT work with WIN32s for Windows 3.1?

[Tom Griest]

Keith Arthurs <karthurs@aol.com> writes:
>I was wondering if GNAT will work if you have windows 3.11 and the
>win32s 32 bit extensions?  

The GNAT compiler is not designed to run on Win32s, but the
programs generated by GNAT will run under Win32s (ie. on Win3.1) providing
you don't use any tasking constructs.  We know of someone doing just
this for a large application involving OLE2.

-Tom

Re: Will GNAT work with WIN32s for Windows 3.1?

[Richard Kenner]

In article <4j73ptINNko8@RA.DEPT.CS.YALE.EDU> griest-tom@cs.yale.edu (Tom Griest) writes:
>The GNAT compiler is not designed to run on Win32s, but the
>programs generated by GNAT will run under Win32s (ie. on Win3.1) providing
>you don't use any tasking constructs.  

I'm a little confused here since the GNAT compiler is a "program
generated by GNAT".  What do you mean by "not designed to run on
Win32s"?  Does it, in fact, run?  Is the issue the calls made by
the driver program?

Re: Will GNAT work with WIN32s for Windows 3.1?

[Tom Griest]

>griest-tom@cs.yale.edu (Tom Griest) writes:

>>The GNAT compiler is not designed to run on Win32s, but the
>>programs generated by GNAT will run under Win32s (ie. on Win3.1) providing
>>you don't use any tasking constructs.  


kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) writes:

>I'm a little confused here since the GNAT compiler is a "program
>generated by GNAT".  


I'm not sure what you consider "GNAT", but I don't consider GNAT a
"C" compiler or the C library, which is what is used to produce a 
considerable amount of what I consider "GNAT".  That is, even
gnat1.exe has quite a bit of legacy "C" code which makes a variety
of C library calls [of course you know this].  What does run
under Win32s is the GNAT RTS and any calls implicitly generated
by GNAT, with the exception of the tasking services.  So writing
a program in Ada, and not using imported routines or tasking, you
should be able to run on Win32s  [NO GUARANTEE OF COURSE!].


>What do you mean by "not designed to run on
>Win32s"?  Does it, in fact, run?  Is the issue the calls made by
>the driver program?

Certainly the driver programs like gcc, gnatbl, gnatmake, and the
like are part of the complexity.  These programs have low level
interface utilities to the operating system that are not part
"Ada".  For example, calls are made directly (or indirectly) to
"spawnvp" which has no direct implementation under Win32s.  In
addition you also have to get "as" and "ld" running to make
"GNAT" work in my mind.

There are many other examples, but frankly, I don't know how many
there are.  As I said, I suspect it is possible to port "GNAT" to
Win32s, but see no real benefit in doing so.  Any machine that has
enough memory to run GNAT on Win32s would do far better running
Win95 (IMHO).

-Tom


PS. for those who may not know, "Win32s" is a subset of the 32-bit Win32 API
that can run on Windows 3.1.  It was designed as a transition tool to
migrate from 3.1 to Win95/WinNT.  My current understanding is that it is
not being actively maintained by Microsoft now that Win95 is out and
gaining popularity.  (That is, it is "fixed" and new APIs will not 
be added to Win32s).