compiler server ...... for Gnat

compiler server ...... for Gnat

[Tony Gair]

Does anyone know how to modify the GNAT Compiler so 
that it provides compilation services across a network
rather than across a file system,

It would also be helpful to know peoples thoughts on
the difficulty and wether I would be sued for doing this.

Re: compiler server ...... for Gnat

[Ted Dennison]

In article <20010918135517.5d3a4ba1.tonygair@blueyonder.co.uk>, Tony Gair
says...
>
>
>Does anyone know how to modify the GNAT Compiler so 
>that it provides compilation services across a network
>rather than across a file system,
>
>It would also be helpful to know peoples thoughts on
>the difficulty and wether I would be sued for doing this.

Exactly what kind of interface were you thinking of?

At one point I was seriously considering using AWS to allow compilations to be
submitted to our compiler. Is that the kind of thing you were thinking of?

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: compiler server ...... for Gnat

[Stephen Leake]

Tony Gair <tonygair@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:

> Does anyone know how to modify the GNAT Compiler so 
> that it provides compilation services across a network
> rather than across a file system,

If the "network" can be mapped to a file system, as is normal for MS
Windows or Unix NFS, GNAT already does this. So I'm not clear what you
are asking. Can you give an example?

> It would also be helpful to know peoples thoughts on the difficulty

Depends on what you are actually doing; it appears to be already done,
so the difficulty is nil.

Hmm. Maybe you mean some sort of HTTP access to a compiler server. The
scenario there would be to copy the user's source to the server file
system, compile it, and copy the result back to the user. No
modification of GNAT required.

> and wether I would be sued for doing this.

Since GNAT is released under the GPL or GMGPL, you are free to modify
it anyway you want. The only restriction is that if you distribute
binaries of the result, you must also distribute the source.

-- 
-- Stephe

Re: compiler server ...... for Gnat

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <20010918135517.5d3a4ba1.tonygair@blueyonder.co.uk>, Tony Gair <tonygair@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
> 
> Does anyone know how to modify the GNAT Compiler so 
> that it provides compilation services across a network
> rather than across a file system,


On VMS you should be able to specify a DECnet filespec or directory
every place you previously specified a normal filespec or directory
(such as on the SET DEFAULT command).  It typically takes special
effort to prevent this :-) when writing a program like GNAT.

> It would also be helpful to know peoples thoughts on
> the difficulty and wether I would be sued for doing this.

Presuming you mean "sued by ACT", any agreement you have with them
would govern whether they would prevail in a US lawsuit.  In the
US anyone can sue, it is winning that gets tricky.  Your email
address indicates the UK, and I have no idea whether that part
of US law was copied from England or not.

Re: compiler server ...... for Gnat

[Florian Weimer]

Tony Gair <tonygair@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:

> It would also be helpful to know peoples thoughts on
> the difficulty and wether I would be sued for doing this.

For a definite answer on the second question, you would have to pay
someone to do a fairly extensive patent search.

Modifying GNAT is no problem, as long as you obey the GPL when you
distribute your results.

Re: compiler server ...... for Gnat

[Robert Dewar]

Tony Gair <tonygair@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message news:<20010918135517.5d3a4ba1.tonygair@blueyonder.co.uk>...

> It would also be helpful to know peoples thoughts on
> the difficulty and wether I would be sued for doing this.

Well anyone can sue anyone for anything, but if you are
worrying about whether modifying GNAT in this kind of
direction would somehow cause you to be sued by ACT, then
the answer is of course not. The whole point of Free Software is to
encourage such invention and adaptation,
that's why the sources are made available, and we are
happy to see people using GNAT for this kind of purpose,
since one of the original goals of GNAT was to provide
a Free Software system suitable for such experimentation.

As to difficulty, I would actually guess that you don't
need to modify GNAT itself, but rather just wrap it in
appropriate scripts, and that should make the project
much more practical.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Re: compiler server ...... for Gnat

[Tony Gair]

Hmmm, sounds good its a deal



On 19 Sep 2001 13:18:51 -0700
dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) wrote:

> Tony Gair <tonygair@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message news:<20010918135517.5d3a4ba1.tonygair@blueyonder.co.uk>...
> 
> > It would also be helpful to know peoples thoughts on
> > the difficulty and wether I would be sued for doing this.
> 
> Well anyone can sue anyone for anything, but if you are
> worrying about whether modifying GNAT in this kind of
> direction would somehow cause you to be sued by ACT, then
> the answer is of course not. The whole point of Free Software is to
> encourage such invention and adaptation,
> that's why the sources are made available, and we are
> happy to see people using GNAT for this kind of purpose,
> since one of the original goals of GNAT was to provide
> a Free Software system suitable for such experimentation.
> 
> As to difficulty, I would actually guess that you don't
> need to modify GNAT itself, but rather just wrap it in
> appropriate scripts, and that should make the project
> much more practical.
> 
> Robert Dewar
> Ada Core Technologies