Re: New GNAT ports (was Re: Ada and Automotive Industry)

[ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)]

Ken Garlington <GarlingtonKE@lmtas.lmco.com> writes:
>Couldn't this be handled via a combination of existing Ada support
>(address clauses, etc.) plus linker support?
>I don't know if you want to specify origins for
>random code; usually, it's for a logically related set of
>code/data/literals, or for a specific object.

The only reason that I bothered about the placement of code at all
was that the 8051 book I was studying included a memory test program
that did this.  According to the Ada 83 LRM I had handy, you _couldn't_
supply address clauses for code.  I suggested a pragma because it seemed
to me that they were the _right_ way to add things like that; that
specific pragma wouldn't change the meaning of the code, so could be
stripped out for testing elsewhere.  When you are trying to make a
case that "language X can solve problem Y", opponents sometimes
regard appeal to "linker support" as a copout.

In the absence of an Ada-8051 compiler, if I had to write any microcontroller
code, I'd use Prolog or Lisp as a macro assembler, and build a lot of error
checking into it.

-- 
My tertiary education cost a quarter of a million in lost income
(assuming close-to-minimum wage); why make students pay even more?
Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.