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,dcf610fdf7f93ed0 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@gnat.com Subject: Re: Tell this C programmer about Ada and realtime... Date: 1998/09/21 Message-ID: <6u6ad6$kin$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 393368644 References: <360179F8.24DE@ix.netcom.com> <6u5nsf$b28@acmey.gatech.edu> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x3.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 209.73.133.253 Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion X-Article-Creation-Date: Mon Sep 21 19:45:42 1998 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/2.02 (OS/2; I) Date: 1998-09-21T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <6u5nsf$b28@acmey.gatech.edu>, jm59@prism.gatech.edu (John M. Mills) wrote: > If your Real-Time-E[nvironment|xecutive] (RTE) vendor uses the GNU tool > suite (This includes at least one mainstream vendor - perhaps Wind River), > you're good to go with GNAT, > which I have found very serviceable. The current > public release handles tasks as UNIX threads, which is fairly clean to spin > off ISRs, etc. (he says, having only used others' libs for ipc). A correction here. Some GNAT versions use UNIX threads for tasks, others do not, some provide a choice. In the case of GNAT ports to VxWorks, GNAT threads do of course translate directly into VxWorks threads. Incidentally, just because Wind River uses GCC, does not mean that GNAT is necessarily the best choice. The whole point of GCC (and GNAT!) is that they follow standard system conventions. Any other compiler that follows these conventions can be used fine with VxWorks for example. If you are using VxWorks in particular, there are a number of different possibilities for compilers. You should judge these using the normal criteria (price, reliability, language coverage, portability features, integration with VxWorks etc) It is certainly true that you can be sure that GNAT and the GCC compiler used in VxWorks are good partners, but other Ada 95 compilers may interface with GCC equally well, and you should not assume otherwise. > Note: We found this works very easily > if the 'main' is in GNAT, but > requires that you explicitly force task instantiation > if your main is [say] > in C. I can get more info on > this if you turn out to need it. There is no requirement for the main program to be "in GNAT" (an odd phrase anyway, in Ada is presumably meant). Note that you may often get wrong advice like this from people using GNAT if they are using the public version, since they are figuring out things for themselves. Certainly if you are using the fully supported version, you will have no problems in mixing Ada and C and other languages, and having the main in any language you like. Many of our customers use a C main program (and GNAT itself has a C main program!) This doesn't mean that the public version is not usable, if you don't have any mission critical requirement (e.g. your interests are purely research oriented or you are just learning to use Ada, then the public version without support maybe just what you need!) > If you like Ada, it's highly useable. Naturally you have to be[come] > comfortable with Ada, but the language was originally conceived for this > type of application -- it may have taken a few iterations to grow into the > truly useable tool I find it to be now. My summary would be: "Ada is like > Pascal with an Attitude." You "pay up front" as you design the module > breakout and interface data types for your Ada app, then you cash in pretty > well at integration and support time, when the enforced clarity and type- > checking pays off. This is particularly true when the project requires a > group of coders to put in to a common library pool. If you are seriously interested in using GNAT with VxWorks or RTEMS, you should contact sales@gnat.com. We have a wide variety of possible product offerings, ranging from fully supported turnkey systems, to cooperative arrangements in which the customer handles backend issues, and we provide help and also support for frontend issues. Which approach is appropriate depends on the environment and the level of knowledge of the customer. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum