From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,c30642befcd7bf85 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Subject: Re: New GNAT ports (was Re: Ada and Automotive Industry) Date: 1997/01/09 Message-ID: <5b252e$fk4$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 208663646 references: <5asvku$jtu$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> <32D39F37.7F1F@mailgw.sanders.lockheed.com> organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia nntp-posting-user: ok newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-01-09T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: I have recently been arguing that an Ada-8501 would be doable. Karl Cooper <"X0723$"@mailgw.sanders.lockheed.com> writes: >We are deeply involved in a commercial product which depends heavily >on an 8051 derivative. Over ten thousand lines of C code are being >maintained at the heart of this product. Reliability and maintain- >ability issues have been raised. Migrating the software to GNAT- >for-the-8051 might be a wise move for us. Keep the group posted >as to progress. I do hope I haven't misled anyone. "wistful thoughts about a product" doesn't mean "concrete plans". I *do* think it is doable. I *would* be interested in doing it. However, it's not the thing that I could reasonably do on my own in my spare time. There *are* some students talking to me about doing a compiler project, but their previous experience consists of having read the Dragon book. (That's _good_ experience, but not enough, I think.) I've poked around in the GNAT sources from time to time, but have never studied the whole thing. People who _have_ studied it: how long do you think it would take to understand the GNAT front end well enough to make an informed judgement about the difficulty of writing a non-GCC back end for it? As I see it, the main problems in a project to actually _do_ this include - making an informed judgement about whether the thing is possible in principle [done] - making an informed judgement about whether doing it by writing a new back end for GNAT (and adding some more Restrictions) [doable with present resources, save possibly time] - finishing the design of the pragmas, System additions, and machine code form. - producing some sample programs in Ada-8051 to arouse even more interest (say translating everything in the book I mentioned before) [a tiny bit done] - putting together a plan (even if it's people donating time, like the Linux project, how _many_ people? doing what exactly?) - getting together a group of volunteers - making the necessary changes to the front end - building a back end (possibly adapting one from a free C-8051 to start with) - integrating and testing, which needs a preceding step of - producing test programs (new code + hand translated "real" code) ... In the mean time, there's a statistics language which needs a compiler, and I think that _is_ within the capabilities of the students and myself, so unless someone offers me startup finance to do Ada-8051, I'd be doing the other instead. I guess that's the point: the only barrier to Ada-8051 is _money_, not technical issues. -- 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.