Re: Advice on best environment for Ada on Windows

[Optikos <ZUERCHER_Andreas@outlook.com>]

On Wednesday, February 12, 2020 at 11:13:16 PM UTC-6, Rick Newbie wrote:
> I'm new to Ada and slowly getting into my first small programs. The 
> question that arises soon after the first steps is that of the best 
> working environment, so I wanted to hear what the regular Ada users work 
> with.
> 
> So far I have identified three possible scenarios:
> 
> 1) GPS only. While GPS looks good it becomes rather fickle when you 
> start working with it. The underlying Python stuff seems to be a 
> constant source of trouble, some scripts that come with GPS are flat out 
> buggy etc. While it is good to work with the project hierarchy and 
> getting online help, the editor is simply not up to the job, not to 
> mention the shaky interaction with external programs most notably gdb.
> 
> 2) GPS with an external text editor. I installed Emacs and am working 
> through their tutorial as well. I have been a Visual Studio user for 
> many years and thus I am spoiled but back in the 90s, I was working on 
> some Wordstar compatible editor, can't remember the name, and with 
> Watcom C compiler which was all pretty basic so I'm no stranger to a 
> retro looking command line environment. I know Emacs has an Ada module 
> which I haven't installed yet but I assume it will be working fine since 
> I read a lot about it.
> 
> 3) Then there is Slickedit. That one looks great and even has a built in 
> Ada browser. The problem is it is basically impossible to compile a 
> gprbuild script from within Slickedit, at least I couldn't get it going 
> and from my conversation on their forum it seems they don't get it 
> working either. Slickedit also has problems with reference building 
> often times it does not recognize identifiers that it should have 
> tagged, but hasn't. Also the "Gnat Ada project" option does not 
> recognize the Ada include directory, you have to create a new "other" 
> project and then set up everything Ada related by hand.
> 
> At the moment I tend to solution 2, although I have to learn the use of 
> Emacs on top of it all, but that seems to be rather simple with some 
> cheat sheet, unless installing the Ada module requires fiddling with 
> Lisp scripts since I know absolutely nothing about Lisp.
> 
> So what does everyone else use? What is the best solution here?

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=AlexGamper.VisualAda

VisualAda* is trying hard to be the state-of-the-art for full integration of Ada into VisualStudio 2017 and VisualStudio 2019.  This integration includes Ada-WinRT, which is Ada's equivalent of C++/WinRT 1.X.  (C++/WinRT 2.X is based on the new Microsoft Xlang** language-interworking infrastructure/code-generator, but VisualAda predates this, so it hasn't come under the Xlang umbrella.)

* open-sourced in pieces at:
https://github.com/Alex-Gamper?tab=repositories

** open-sourced at:
https://github.com/Microsoft/xlang