GNATDroid (Ada cross-compiler for ARM/Android) incorporated into FreeBSD ports tree

GNATDroid (Ada cross-compiler for ARM/Android) incorporated into FreeBSD ports tree

[jrmarino]

As I just posted on http://www.dragonlace.net, GNATDroid is now
officially part of the FreeBSD ports tree and will show in the "lang"
category upon the next ports update.  I'd like to thank Frederic Culot
again for his efforts in getting GNATDroid approved so quickly.

To recap an earlier post, GNATDroid is a GCC 4.6 cross-compiler (C and
Ada only) that hosts on i386 and AMD64 FreeBSD, and targets either
ARMv5 or ARMv7 Android platform.  I proved a couple of weeks ago that
these cross-compilers pass the ACATS testsuite without failure on
these targets.

The ARMv5 compiler would be used if the target device is known to be
ARMv6 or less, or if it's desired to run the binary on the Android SDK
which is limited to ARMv5 instructions.  The ARMv7 compiler is more
useful as it targets the Cortex-A series chips (NEON instruction set)
which are typically used in high-end smart phones and tablets.

How to obtain the compiler now (as root on FreeBSD):
> portsnap fetch update
> cd /usr/ports/lang/gnatdroid-armv7
> make install

This installs the cross-compiler at /usr/local/android9/ARMv7/bin
all binaries are prefixed by "arm-android-eabi-" e.g. arm-android-eabi-
gnatmake

Enjoy creating Ada applications on Android!
John

Re: GNATDroid (Ada cross-compiler for ARM/Android) incorporated into FreeBSD ports tree

[Brian Drummond]

On Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:22:37 -0700, jrmarino wrote:

> As I just posted on http://www.dragonlace.net, GNATDroid is now
> officially part of the FreeBSD ports tree and will show in the "lang"
> category upon the next ports update.  I'd like to thank Frederic Culot
> again for his efforts in getting GNATDroid approved so quickly.

I ran "portsnap fetch" and saw these just before you posted!
GNATDroid installs cleanly here, and builds a working "hello world" 
executable. Tests here so far are limited to copying the executable onto 
a USB drive, then onto the tablet, and running it within the terminal 
emulator. Now on to more interesting examples...

- Brian

Re: GNATDroid (Ada cross-compiler for ARM/Android) incorporated into FreeBSD ports tree

[jrmarino]

On Sep 9, 3:29 pm, Brian Drummond <br...@shapes.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I ran "portsnap fetch" and saw these just before you posted!
> GNATDroid installs cleanly here, and builds a working "hello world"
> executable. Tests here so far are limited to copying the executable onto
> a USB drive, then onto the tablet, and running it within the terminal
> emulator. Now on to more interesting examples...
>
> - Brian

I used the SSHDroid application to set up an SSH Daemon on my tablet,
then used SCP to copy the Ada binaries over.  You can even execute
them remotely from the host machine using SSH.  This is the technique
I used to run through the ACATS testsuite.  There's some lag, but much
better than breaking out a USB stick.

John