Re: Newbie Needs Ada Advice

["Alex R. Mosteo" <devnull@mailinator.com>]

ezkcdude wrote:

> One idea I have, and I'd love to hear advice or comments, is to use
> Ada as the "engine" for my program, and somehow use Java to create the
> GUI and deal with images. Does this seem like a possibility?
> -evan

I've done this, or something similar. My core was a stand-alone Ada program,
with SOAP web services (again, thanks to AWS) for feedback/command. Any
compliant soap client could interact with my core, and in fact I had a java
one.

If you want to have a single executable, I don't know how to link with
java... unless you use gjc I suppose (or jgnat, but I understand is heavily
outdated and unmaintained). But then, you can easily go the Ada+C+C++ way.
Calling Ada from C/C++ is easy; C from Ada likewise. C++ is a bigger
problem that I usually avoid with a simple C gluing layer.

Then, all the myriads of libraries in C/C++ are there for you, and you can
program the part you deem necessary in Ada (if any, of course).

As an example: my current project uses a core in Ada, that interfaces with a
robotic library for both control and simulation that has a C API.
Furthermore, I must exchange data using YARP (a C++ library) with some
modules programmed by colleagues, and I do this with just a simple C++ file
with extern "C" exports for calling from Ada.

In truth, there's some overhead in going mixed-language. But once you define
interfaces and stick to them, the rest is piece of cake.

But if your non-Ada concern is a good GUI, maybe you should take a look a
the Ada bindings first. Maybe GtkAda is your deal (though if you're an Ada
newcomer I don't think so :) or one of the others is...

I don't really know how people build the amazing GUIs I see in my KDE
desktop. Which tools are out there? KDevelop? Some Qt builder? Glade
doesn't impress me much, I think I'm also missing something in the Gtk+
side.

As the bottom line of my personal current oppinion: if I were to build a
good GUI for my Ada code, I'd use whatever toolkit I liked best, in its
native language, and glue it to Ada via C exports.