Re: ??? Help!: how to do unconstraned arrays/records???

[dewar@gnat.com]

In article <3641C18F.B70E8B7C@avionics2.robins.af.mil>,
  al johnston <johnstona@avionics2.robins.af.mil> wrote:

 > Why are you using an obsolete language at this stage. I can understand the
> > cases of large scale legacy projects that committed some time ago to the
> > technology, but it is hard to believe that this is your case.
>
> we have 500k of 83 code for an embedded system.  we build on a solaris
> box, and the target is a force 2ce (sparc2) cpu card using vxWorks.
>
> I have been unable to find a ada compiler vendor interested in supporting
> this configuration.  We are using VadsWorks which is now owned
> by rational.... and surprizingly they were not intrested in providing
> a version of there ada compiler (apex i think) even though they
> already have a "native" compiler for the sparc....  really pissed me of
> since they are the ones who killed vadsworks.
>
> gnat sounded promisig, but I would have to port the ada runtime
> for vxworks myself...  The real kicker was the screwy way
> gnat does makes and handles file names and preprocessor directives.
> well, its screwie relitive to the vads handles them.  it looks like it
> would tak 6-8 man months to get ported to gnat, most of that spent
> reformating files and creating make files....right now
> the time is not there...


First, you should definitely contact sales@gnat.com regarding possible
support for this configuration. GNATWorks, the VxWorks version of GNAT (*)
Professional supports a number of targets and it is most certainly practical
to port it to the SPARC card that you mention. Whether it is practical for
you to do the port on your own is of course another matter.

As for file names and preprocessing, I think you will find that it is much
easier than you think. Certainly there is no need to change file names, and
we have a number of customers who have ported very large systems (millions
of lines of code, including preprocessed code) from VADS to GNAT very rapidly,
e.g. within a few weeks, with our help.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

(*) A version of GNATWorks has recently sucessfully completed validation
testing with version 2.1 of the ACVC suite. This is the first 100% validation
of a VxWorks Ada 95 combination, including all the annexes, and most notably,
passing 100% of the real time annex tests.

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