Re: Building an Ada compiler

[James E. Hopper <jhopper@erinet.com>]

In article <xe1ohm2tidg.fsf@maneki-neko.cygnus.com> Mark Eichin,
eichin@cygnus.com writes: >If you've got at least one unix-gcc wizard
and one mac-wizard, >(preferably in the same body :-) you can probably
make a good estimate >of what it would take to get GNAT to use that
gcc support (I don't >actually know if it is up-to-date in the current
FSF release.) Then >the big challenge is the Ada Runtime; again, look
at the example gnat >ones and figure out how/if yo can do that kind of
thing under macos...


I am a past master of the mac OS programming (i have made a fair
amount of money doing contract programming for the mac), and i have
spent the last couple of years working with unix, and having spent
about 10 years working in Ada, and As the person who did most of the
work on the MachTen port (with a LOT of help from the folks at
NYU/ACT) and others) i think i qualify to address this ;-)  I will say
that this is far less easy than Tucker makes it out.  Realize that if
it were this easy it would have been done long ago.  I happen to know
that one of the people at cygnus has been working on porting gcc to
MPW for a couple of years and he is still not happy enough with it to
release it.

An MPW version of GCC that is very old 2.3?? exists and a port of the
current version is underway as i say (powermac only).  Moving from an
MPW IDE to something like code warrior is much more work as building
gcc and Gnat is very dependent on GNU make which is fundamentally
incomparable with how projects work in code warrior.  i suppose one
could do as Stan has done at cygnus and write a translator to
translate between GNU make files and the code warrior project. i
suspect its a bigger effort than one would believe givin how much work
i know stan has put into his in his mpw translator and its still
requires (last time i talked to him) some hand work.

if the best you can do is MPW, one has to ask what is to be gained by
it. you wold still need to buy MPW which is every bit as much as unmac
line as MachTen. in fact MPW and machten are very similar IDE
environments. The cost of MPW is similar to what the cost of MachTen
will be come august/sept when the software development release for Ada
is available.  Machten still sits on the mac os, and i use mac tools
like bbedit and code warrior to do things like editing, and source
code control.  we can develop double clickable macos applications, as
well as unix CLI apps with macOS windowing support in place of
x/motif.  So how much more mac can you wish?? I do love the code
warrior environment to but i KNOW how much more work it will be to
move from what we have to this, and i don't want to wait another year
to have a useful compiler, do you?? We have spent a couple of thousand
man hours over the last year and a half to get the machten port
working, if you have that kind of time to throw at it i would be
delighted to see it done.

I know how to use machten to build a stand alone gcc that can work
with other IDE's like the GW AdaED environment or perhaps as a plug in
to metrowerks but this gnat would not be able to build itself without
much more work than i feel like throwing at it.  but unless someone
feels like funding this i am going to concentrate on making the
Machten compile and tools as good as they can be. i see issues like
moving it to another IDE as distractions of the fundamental issue of
providing a useful compiler.

I would also point out that a couple of Ada vendor who i have haunted
over the last few years to do a mac port of their commercial compilers
told me they are watching the machten port to see how many people use
it as a gauge of the interest in Ada in the mac world.

jim