Re: gnat for DOS

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <317A8B31.CFD@easystreet.com>,
Al Christians  <achrist@easystreet.com> wrote:
>There is a note in the gnat archive with the DOS version that says
>that the gnat make is broken under DOS.  Does this mean that gnat is
>not currently useful to develop programs that will run under DOS, or
>is there any way around this problem?  Are there any ideas about of
>when the expected remedy to this difficulty will be available? 

gnatmake is "broken" in the current (3.01) version of GNAT under DOS
because the djgpp version 1 memory extender loads a copy of itself into
conventional RAM for each program spawned, at 130k per copy. This eats
memory pretty fast during the bind/link phases using gnatmake. We
decided not to distribute gnatmake for this reason.

Workaround? Just compile the individual units individually, instead
of using gnatmake. No big deal unless your program has zillions of
units.

That said, I should point out that a 3.03 release, compiled for djgpp
version _2_ (which uses dpmi memory and has no more of the above
problems) is quite near at hand (a week or so). Better still, this
release has a tasking runtime! We've done some pretty extensive
testing and think this will be a very good release. gnatmake works
just peachy keen. So does the tasking stuff.

The DOS build for djgpp v2, and the completion of the tasking runtime, 
was done mostly by Doug Rupp of ACT, to whom all GNAT/DOS fans will owe
thanks. The final packaging and integration with a new AdaCAPS release
is happening at GW. 

Stay tuned; we'll post an anouncement here, of course.

Mike Feldman
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Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) 
http://www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/mfeldman
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