Re: GNAT Opinions

[dewar@gnat.com]

In article <36859E9F.58605AB6@mediaone.net>,
  Steven Hovater <nh-ho@mediaone.net> wrote:

> One thing to think about - if the application has been
> written to take advantage of such things
> such as the VADSexec packages - with it's support for the
> tailorable runtime, semaphores, mailboxes,
> etc. etc. you may find it easier to continue to use the
> code you have (in it's present state) and stick
> with the Rational compiler (e.g. VADS, or Apex). Depends
> on what you're trying to accomplish - do you have funding
> from your customer to rehost? (for example). Do you have
> to retrain your developersto use GNAT?

One interesting issue here is that the specs of some of
these packages are copyrighted. In my opinion, it is far
better for customers if the specs of such packages are not
copyrighted in a restrictive manner. When developing
applications in Ada, it is important to pay attention to
whether vendor supplied libraries have copyrighted specs
that will make porting difficult. Note that in the case of
GNAT, we always ensure that specs are copyrighted in a
manner that makes sure that it will be possible to move the
specs to another implementation. This is one of the great
advantages of using an open source software approach!

That being said, the particular problem of copyrighted VADS
packages has not proved an insuperable barrier for moving
to GNAT by any means. The functionalities provided in these
packages are directly available either in ADa 95 itself, or
in GNAT supplied packages, so providing the necessary
implementations to replace the VADS packages is not too
difficult.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

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