Re: Linux Kernel in Ada. Repost

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com>]

In article <370CC730.4C6112DB@utech.net>,
  "Jeffrey D. Cherry" <jdcherry@utech.net> wrote:
> I'd be interested ... sounds like fun.  I'm not sure
> about the C2Ada tool since I have no experience with it
> myself.

Even if C2Ada were a fully capable C-to-Ada translator,
which it is not, it would be totally useless for this
project.

I cannot imagine a worse excercise than to reproduce the
Linux Kernel in C-style Ada.

If people want to do this, the challenge is to redesign
at all levels of abstraction in elegant Ada style. A tool
for automatic translation just gets in the way of this
goal.

Note that if you use GNAT here, you have extremely easy
integration with gcc-C which is of course what Linux uses.
You don't have to rewrite the entire kernel.

Instead, just take some sample modules and really work hard
on those to demonstrate the advantages of Ada style.

Then you can demonstrate that your code works by mixing it
in with the C code for other parts of the kernel.
Eventually of course you might replace more, most, or all
of the C code.

But the point is that this is then a nice incremental
project with a working system at every stage of the game,
which can be a nice demonstration of Ada right away.

Don't just think of a project like this as being aimed at
showing that Linux can be written in Ada, of course it can.
Anything can be written in any language, and it proves
nothing.

The goal is to show examples that back up the claim of
Ada being preferable to C for this kind of programming.

Robert Dewar

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