Re: Ada & Posix

Re: Ada & Posix

[Robert Dewar]

Markus says

<<And as a consequence, not much portable system programming for
Unix in Ada seems to be going on at the moment and GNAT seems to
be mostly used for teaching the language since C development
environments still provide a much richer API at the moment
and every Ada developer has to first come up with his private
subet binding to the C libraries before he can start with the
actual project.
>>

Actually GNAT is being used in a wide variety of large scale commercial
projects on Unix. Some customers have indeed been interested in a Posix
interface, which is why we are working with Ted Baker's team at FSU to
integrate Florist with the GNAT release.

However, in our experience there are many users of GNAT under Unix who
prefer to use pragma Import to get at whatever facilities they need, or
who are using other bindings. The demand for a Posix interface is by
no means as universal as Markus seems to think it is.

Of course I understand the "if only Ada 95 provided XXX, then all the
world would flock from C/C++ to Ada 95."  I look on all such claims
with what the US Secretary of Defence called an "Ohio attitude", namely
I won't be convinced till I see some evidence that such a claim is true :-)

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Re: Ada & Posix

[Brian Rogoff]

On 23 Feb 1998, Robert Dewar wrote:
> Of course I understand the "if only Ada 95 provided XXX, then all the
> world would flock from C/C++ to Ada 95."  I look on all such claims
> with what the US Secretary of Defence called an "Ohio attitude", namely
> I won't be convinced till I see some evidence that such a claim is true :-)

Totally off topic, but are you sure that shouldn't be a "Missouri attitude"? 
I must be culturally unsophisticated or something, but I thought that 
particular weltanschauung was a characteristic of the "show me" state. 
Which Ohio reference am I missing here?

Also, if Ada 95 provided XXX, we'd be within our rights to spam the world 
with "ADULTS ONLY: Ada 95 does XXX!!!" :-)

-- Brian

Re: Ada & Posix

[Markus Kuhn]

Jerry van Dijk wrote:
> It would be great if we would have Posix bindings on
> the major platforms with all compilers, as that would
> remove a lot of environment dependenties in our code.

Fully agreed! Adding a good POSIX.5 binding with man pages
to the GNAT distribution should help a lot to make Ada an
attractive system programming language for Unix systems.

> 1) Anyone willing to do such a binding will first have
>     to spend money on buying a standard;

Expensive paper-only standards are a real hazzle for non-commercial
(academic) users. Suggesting your local university library to get
a copy is probably the best approach.

> So, I am not suprised that -AFAIK- no Ada vendors
> are rushing to get the standard implemented.

And as a consequence, not much portable system programming for
Unix in Ada seems to be going on at the moment and GNAT seems to
be mostly used for teaching the language since C development
environments still provide a much richer API at the moment
and every Ada developer has to first come up with his private
subet binding to the C libraries before he can start with the
actual project.

Markus

-- 
Markus G. Kuhn, Security Group, Computer Lab, Cambridge University, UK
email: mkuhn at acm.org,  home page: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>

X-Rated Ada [slightly rude]

[Nick Roberts]

Brian Rogoff wrote in message ...
>On 23 Feb 1998, Robert Dewar wrote:
[...]
>Also, if Ada 95 provided XXX, we'd be within our rights to spam the world
>with "ADULTS ONLY: Ada 95 does XXX!!!" :-)


Or would that be Ada 69?

(AA: if you are looking down on us now: only kidding :-)