Re: GNAVI: Win32 bindings & ATL framework for Ada

["Dan'l Miller" <optikos@verizon.net>]

On Monday, June 30, 2014 3:31:37 PM UTC-5, gautier...@hotmail.com wrote:
> Le dimanche 29 juin 2014 16:47:54 UTC+2, Dan'l Miller a écrit :
> 
> > GNAVI is Ada for Windows development prior to Windows 8; GNAVI does not support Microsoft App Store apps via WinRT.
> 
> 
> 
> Did you have issues running software built with GWindows/GNAVI under Windows 8 or 8.1 ?

I am evaluating whether GNAVI meets my needs.  It seems that GNAVI supports only Win32 (which is based on C API & ABI), not the new Windows Runtime (which is based on a derivative variant of COM).  It seems that GNATCOM's ActiveX design could be extended to support Windows Runtime's COM.

> If so don't hesitate to share your experience.

It seems that GNAVI's design has not yet been extended beyond Win32 to Windows Runtime (on either x86 or ARM).  [MinGW-64 is chipping away at the obstacles of running GCC 4.9 including GNAT on Windows 8.X for ARM.]  It seems possible that GNAVI's design could be extended to be, effectively, a port of Microsoft's WRL (the Windows Runtime Library for C++), but perhaps with 

> There is even a dedicated mailing list (gnavi-discuss).

Yes, I am aware of that; I am a (lurking) subscriber of gnavi-discuss.  Given that the archive of gnavi-discuss has been silent regarding Windows Runtime for store apps, I thought that I would broaden the audience here on comp.lang.ada to Ada people outside of Gnavi to see if additional interested parties would find Gnavi intriguing in either its Win32 incarnation now or expanding to support a WRL-reverse-engineered (and/or C++/CX inspired*) Ada-based binding to Windows Runtime so that Ada2012 could be utilized for developing "Modern/Metro" Windows Store apps instead of "desktop" Win32 executables.  My intent is dual-fold:
1) give GNAVI & GNATCOM as it is today some visibility in general;
2) stoke the fires of GNAVI & GNATCOM evolution for the future henceforth.

* inspired here = without the /CX C++/CLI-like oddball thick-binding syntax extensions for C++, but rather as standard-Ada-compliant nice thick binding instead of WRL's rough-shod intricacies & boilerplate idioms for C++.