Please, Not MachTen! (Was: learning Ada on a Mac)

Please, Not MachTen! (Was: learning Ada on a Mac)

[Spencer Smith]

Hi Y'all;
I was pleased to see that GNAT was available on the Mac platform. I was
tickled pink! I quickly followed the link, and. . .
. . .was very disappointed. The fact that the GNAT Ada compiler was
available was heartening, but that it needs MachTen to run in is not. I
have installed and experimented with MachTen, and as an environment for
developing applications and tools, it is a bear. I had the *worst* time,
so bad that I finally gave up my dream of dual-booting a Mac with Unix.
The OSF/Apple port of MkLinux is out, and I'm using it/ running
it/cursing it/loving it. It has a *lot* of potential. I haven't tried to
install GNAT within the MkLinux environment, has anyone else given it a
try?
However, that is still developing Unix apps on a fundamentally Unix
platform, regardless of the cute logos imbedded on the case of the CPU.
I'm still in search of an Ada95 compiler for the Mac platform.

Does anyone know of any such? Validated would be best, but I'm will ing
to beta if I can work with Ada. (hey, that kinda rhymes. Huh-huck!)

Please e-mail me with any info that you might have. I'm all ears. Well,
mostly ears, I have eyes too. And a hand, well, two hands. Oh, hell,
it's just a metphor anyway!

-Spencer Smith
spencera@helios.uoregon.edu

Re: Please, Not MachTen! (Was: learning Ada on a Mac)

[Robert Dewar]

Spencer said

"I was pleased to see that GNAT was available on the Mac platform. I was
tickled pink! I quickly followed the link, and. . .
. . .was very disappointed. The fact that the GNAT Ada compiler was
available was heartening, but that it needs MachTen to run in is not."

Our experience with Machten is much more positive, probably you were
working with an early version, this system is very much in development
mode, and each new version we have seen is much more complete and
much more solid. Other people using the MAC port have had similar
experience.

As I mentioned before, we had essentially the choice between Machten
which is close to a standard Unix, and therefore familiar to a lot of
people, or using Apple's proprietary interface which is far less
familiar. We certainly need a full featured command line interface
for running gcc, and of course gcc hosts more cleanly under a unix
interface anyway. The applications will run under System 7, but
the compiler does require Machten.

Anyway, maybe you should not give up on your *dream* so soon, and give
Machten another try. Presumably if you have a license already, the
upgrade is easily obtained. 

I think by the time the GNAT/Mac project is completed, in another 6 weeks or
so, that the version of Machten that will be released soon after will be
quite capable and quite affordable. Watch for details.

P.S. The only other source for an Ada compiler on the Mac that I am
familiar with (not counting some not well supported Ada 83 compilers
that are still around) is the Intermetrics JBM based compiler. This
is a subset so far (e.g. no tasking), but generates Java compatible
output, which is interesting for some applications, and eventually
a full implementation is planned.

Re: Please, Not MachTen! (Was: learning Ada on a Mac)

[Gary McKee]

In article <dewar.839732613@schonberg>,
dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote:

 > Spencer said
 > 
 > "I was pleased to see that GNAT was available on the Mac platform. I was
 > tickled pink! I quickly followed the link, and. . .
 > . . .was very disappointed. The fact that the GNAT Ada compiler was
 > available was heartening, but that it needs MachTen to run in is not."
 >... 
 > Anyway, maybe you should not give up on your *dream* so soon, and give
 > Machten another try. Presumably if you have a license already, the
 > upgrade is easily obtained. 
 > 
 > I think by the time the GNAT/Mac project is completed, in another 6
weeks or
 > so, that the version of Machten that will be released soon after will be
 > quite capable and quite affordable. Watch for details.
---------------------------------------------------------------
The newest versions of MachTen are significantly improved over what we
started with a year ago, Looking at the newest upgrades, especially on the
Power PC, is worthwhile.

We will be producing and marketing a CD_ROM in October with a stripped down
MachTen and the full gcc environment: Ada95, c, c++, assembly languages. It
should be quite usable as a S/W development environment and will be
competitively priced.

Latest download data for the Ada95 compiler is at:
http://gnat-mac.com/macada/

Re: Please, Not MachTen! (Was: learning Ada on a Mac)

[Mike Stark]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> Spencer said
> 
> "I was pleased to see that GNAT was available on the Mac platform. I was
> tickled pink! I quickly followed the link, and. . .
> . . .was very disappointed. The fact that the GNAT Ada compiler was
> available was heartening, but that it needs MachTen to run in is not."
> 
<<snip>>
> 
> P.S. The only other source for an Ada compiler on the Mac that I am
> familiar with (not counting some not well supported Ada 83 compilers
> that are still around) is the Intermetrics JBM based compiler. This
> is a subset so far (e.g. no tasking), but generates Java compatible
> output, which is interesting for some applications, and eventually
> a full implementation is planned.

AppletMagic also lacks text_io and other run-time library stuff (at
least as of V1.3), but what's there works really nicely!  I've been 
using the Sun version, not the Mac one, but I don't see why that should 
make a difference!

Mike

Re: Please, Not MachTen! (Was: learning Ada on a Mac)

[james E. Hopper]

Spencer Smith says:

>I was pleased to see that GNAT was available on the Mac platform. I
was >tickled pink! I quickly followed the link, and. . . >. . .was
very disappointed. The fact that the GNAT Ada compiler was >available
was heartening, but that it needs MachTen to run in is not. I >have
installed and experimented with MachTen, and as an environment for
>developing applications and tools, it is a bear. I had the *worst*
time, >so bad that I finally gave up my dream of dual-booting a Mac
with Unix.


I have used unix on sun, sgi, HP, and linux and of all of them MachTen
is easily the nicest environment if you want a mac style interface
(thought sgi is also VERY nice).  I suspect that if you want a "pure"
unix environment you might be a bit dissapointed as emacs has some
problems on it (though vi, nedit others work fine), and a few other
unix tools are not available.  This is rapidly changing for the better. 
Though for developing Ada programs i have not yet found any missing
that i care about.  more importantly we are using machten only as a
shell for developing Mac Code which is a completely different beast.
We use Mac Text Editors, mac debuggers, Mac CM tools etc with machten
being used only to run the compiler and linker.  we do have the choice
of building apps either as straight unix (including x amd motif), unix
apps with macOS GUI, or standalone Mac OS applications. MKLinux has NO
access to the mac toolbox so it can do nothing except the first of
these three.  if all you want is a hard core unix environment as
spencer says then mklinux is for you!  If you want an environment to
do more than MachTen is great!  It has had a few problems in that it
does not have protected memory, and it did not have a native file
system (that made its unix apps slower) but both of these are close
to being available and will make MachTen even more useful. Of course i
am talking about the powermac version.  the 68k version is much more
of a complete unix as it has full memory protection, etc, but it does
not allow the user to develop mac OS apps as prt of it.


>The OSF/Apple port of MkLinux is out, and I'm using it/ running
>it/cursing it/loving it. It has a *lot* of potential. I haven't tried
to >install GNAT within the MkLinux environment, has anyone else given
it a >try? >However, that is still developing Unix apps on a
fundamentally Unix >platform, regardless of the cute logos imbedded on
the case of the CPU. >I'm still in search of an Ada95 compiler for the
Mac platform.

A MKLinux compiler is NOT it!  It will only allow you to develop unix
only applications!  If what you want is a Mac Ada compile then why do
you care what machten environment is like as we rarely spend much time
in it to develop mac apps.  its just a window where we run gnatmake,
then switch back to the mac!


jim hopper

Re: Please, Not MachTen! (Was: learning Ada on a Mac)

[Tucker Taft]

Spencer Smith (spencera@helios.cs.uoregon.edu) wrote:
: ...
: Does anyone know of any such? Validated would be best, but I'm will ing
: to beta if I can work with Ada. (hey, that kinda rhymes. Huh-huck!)

We have an "alpha" version of our Ada->Java-byte-code compiler for
the Mac.  You can get it from:

   http://www.inmet.com/javadir/download/

It does not require MachTen, but it does require a Web browser
that supports Java, or Sun's "JDK."

: Please e-mail me with any info that you might have. I'm all ears. Well,
: mostly ears, I have eyes too. And a hand, well, two hands. Oh, hell,
: it's just a metphor anyway!

: -Spencer Smith
: spencera@helios.uoregon.edu

-Tucker Taft   stt@inmet.com   http://www.inmet.com/~stt/
Intermetrics, Inc.  Cambridge, MA  USA