OpenToken project announcement

OpenToken project announcement

[dennison]

(I'm sorry for the waste of bandwidth, but I meant to make this its own
topic, not to bury it in the bottom of another thread.)

I'd like to announce the initial release of the token analysis packages I
developed at my work to the Ada OpenSource community, under the aegis of the
OpenToken Project. A webpage for the project is at
http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/OpenToken/OpenToken.html ).

The goal of the project is to further the development of the reusable
exensible token analysis packages, and eventually to provide similar packages
to support parsing activites.

The initial version of the pacakges is downloadable from the web page in
gnu-zipped and Windows zipped forms. It currently contains only a small readme
file for documentation, and generic tokenizer objects for character sets,
identifiers, integer literals, real literals, keywords, and line comments.

In the next release I hope to provide a simple example, and perhaps more
documentation and recognizers. Any help anyone can provide in these areas
(particularly new recognizers) would be greatly appreciated, of course.

I'd also like to have input from people who have experience in writing
compilers on the algorithms used in this package. Until I can generate some
benchmarks against lex-generated analyziers, that is my only way of
evaluating the advisability of the approach I took for the analysis engine.
But I do realize such folk tend to be incredibly busy.

I'd like to take a moment to list the motivations that caused this release:

FlightSafety's decision to release this code seemed to be based on (this is
*not* an official company statement!):
  o  The possibility of increasing the utility and stability of the package
without dedicating its own manpower to do so.
  o  A percieved moral obligation to put something back into the OSS community
that they derive so much benifit from.

My reasons for wanting to release this code as OSS are:
  o  The ability to use this highly useful tool no matter where my career may
take me.
  o  It seemed like a good project to base my master's thesis on. :-)

--
T.E.D.

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Linux Kernel in Ada. Repost

[Bruce MacDonald]

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(Reposted at the suggestion of T. E. D.)

I�m sorry about the poor use of bandwith, I was unaware there would be a
problem with posting on Maundy Thursday. :)

I have been casting about trying to find out if anyone is rewriting the Linux
kernel in a high level language, such as Ada.
Is anyone else interested in a project like this? Would the Intermetrics C2Ada
tool be the appropriate starting place for this project?
Thank you,

Bruce MacDonald

What doesn't kill you, makes you bitter and cynical.

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Re: Linux Kernel in Ada. Repost

[Jeffrey D. Cherry]

Bruce MacDonald wrote:
> 
> I have been casting about trying to find out if anyone is rewriting the Linux
> kernel in a high level language, such as Ada.
> Is anyone else interested in a project like this? Would the Intermetrics C2Ada
> tool be the appropriate starting place for this project?

I'd be interested ... sounds like fun.  I'm not sure about the C2Ada
tool since I have no experience with it myself.  However, I don't see
how it could hurt and at the very least would automate at least a
portion of the process.

Regards,

Jeffrey D. Cherry
Senior IV&V Analyst
Logicon Geodynamics

Re: Linux Kernel in Ada. Repost

[Corey Ashford]

"Jeffrey D. Cherry" wrote:
> 
> Bruce MacDonald wrote:
> >
> > I have been casting about trying to find out if anyone is rewriting the Linux
> > kernel in a high level language, such as Ada.
> > Is anyone else interested in a project like this? Would the Intermetrics C2Ada
> > tool be the appropriate starting place for this project?
> 
> I'd be interested ... sounds like fun.  I'm not sure about the C2Ada
> tool since I have no experience with it myself.  However, I don't see
> how it could hurt and at the very least would automate at least a
> portion of the process.
> 

I'd like to ask what the long-term goal of this would be?

Without a considerable amount of work, I don't know how you'd keep the Ada kernel
up with the C kernel.  About the only way that would happen is if you could convert
Torvald and his groupies to use Ada, and the chances of that are about nil at this
point, don't you think?

- Corey

Re: Linux Kernel in Ada. Repost

[me]

 
Why don't we write a brand new OS in Ada?  It will be all in 100% pure
Ada. It will be the most powerfull, most reliable, most flexible, 
100% up-time, 24 hrs per day, 365 days per year, and runs on 1000 CPU's 
without a sweat, a kicks Ass OS, it will mnake Solaris and Linux and 
the Hurd and VMS and OS390 look like little babies in front of it.

That is what we need to do. Don't limit yourself by what is out today, look
ahead, make a revolutionary OS that will rock the world, an OS like
no other out there. It will detect every hardware you throw at it, it will 
tune itself as it runs, never ever crashes, comes pre-packged with
the most powerfull development tools ever made, and so flexible and 
configurable that it will make Unix looks like a dead rock in still 
water in comparison.

It will all be free source and open source of course. 

This is the kind of OS I'll be happy to work on with the others, but I 
would not be interested in just a copy of an existing OS.

me

Re: Linux Kernel in Ada. Repost

[Tarjei Tj�stheim Jensen]

me@me wrote in message <7el9so$geb@drn.newsguy.com>...
>
>Why don't we write a brand new OS in Ada?  It will be all in 100% pure
>Ada. It will be the most powerfull, most reliable, most flexible,
>100% up-time, 24 hrs per day, 365 days per year, and runs on 1000 CPU's
>without a sweat, a kicks Ass OS, it will mnake Solaris and Linux and
>the Hurd and VMS and OS390 look like little babies in front of it.


It would be more useful to write useful utilities for Linux in Ada or extend
Linux with Ada software.

A few things that could/should be improved; NIS and printing.

NIS has real problems with even reasonable sized files (or maps as they call
it). E.g. there are problems with the number of members of groups. You cannot
have password aging with NIS. NIS+ is supposed to have its own problems and is
supposedly not an option.

There is a lot that can be done about printing in Unix. Especially with regards
to proper handling of printers, access control, etc. HP does reasonably well
with their own printers with the Jetadmin software for HP-UX and Solaris. SGI
seems to do reasonably well with their scripts (although I don't like their
lpsched implementation). A common problem is that the printing system have to
be shut down before you can do certain operations, like adding or removing a
printer. Sometime it is hard to find where the host keeps certain information
about ques on the remote machine.

I'm sure others will tell you more things that needs to be done.

Greetings,

Re: Linux Kernel in Ada. Repost

[bill_]

In article <7elrg5$egk2@ftp.kvaerner.com>, "Tarjei says...
>
 
>It would be more useful to write useful utilities for Linux in Ada or extend
>Linux with Ada software.
>
 
It is kind'a hard to write Linux or Unix stuff in Ada, becuase the Posix
Ada binding do not seem to work well or even documented. The Posix Ada
bindings for linux (there is now even an RPM for these for Linux!) do not
have an API document to tell one how to use them to write the sort of stuff
you are talking about.

Bill

Re: Linux Kernel in Ada. Repost

[Tarjei Tj�stheim Jensen]

bill_@nospam wrote:

> In article <7elrg5$egk2@ftp.kvaerner.com>, "Tarjei says...
> >
>
> >It would be more useful to write useful utilities for Linux in Ada or extend
> >Linux with Ada software.
> >
>
> It is kind'a hard to write Linux or Unix stuff in Ada, becuase the Posix
> Ada binding do not seem to work well or even documented. The Posix Ada
> bindings for linux (there is now even an RPM for these for Linux!) do not
> have an API document to tell one how to use them to write the sort of stuff
> you are talking about.
>

If you don't like what is there, make your own. In order to get a decent result
one should probably read one of W. Rickard Stevens programming books. He uses C,
but there should be no problem translating to Ada.

Regardless of what one does it is neccessary to understand the problem domain in
order to provide a sensible solution.


Greetings,

Re: Linux Kernel in Ada. Repost

[Mich]

In article <370F025C.4C821FEC@online.no>, "Tarjei says...
 
>bill_@nospam wrote:
>
>> In article <7elrg5$egk2@ftp.kvaerner.com>, "Tarjei says...
>> >
>>
>> >It would be more useful to write useful utilities for Linux in Ada or extend
>> >Linux with Ada software.
>> >
>>

>> It is kind'a hard to write Linux or Unix stuff in Ada, becuase the Posix
>> Ada binding do not seem to work well or even documented. The Posix Ada
>> bindings for linux (there is now even an RPM for these for Linux!) do not
>> have an API document to tell one how to use them to write the sort of stuff
>> you are talking about.
>>
>


>If you don't like what is there, make your own. In order to get a decent result
>one should probably read one of W. Rickard Stevens programming books. He uses C,
>but there should be no problem translating to Ada.
>
>Regardless of what one does it is neccessary to understand the problem domain in
>order to provide a sensible solution.
>

Oh PLEASE !!
 
While Ada programmers wasting their time each writing the same binding
to Unix (which they need to even start writing the real stuff to use 
the binding) the world is passing them on the fast track.

Do you think it is trivial to write a fully working Ada posix binding?
by saying just go read a book to do it, shows that you really do not
know what is involved here. Have a look at the current Ada binding posix
code just to see what is there. Remember, you have to implement all
the posix standard, not just 5 easy little functions.

Do you think those Java API's that Sun with its hundreds of programmers
working for years on them, is something one person can just go build
if they don't like what is not out there?

Ada's problem is that there is no central group that handles it as far as
devloping API's, libraries, etc.. and to coordinates things. This central
group can then organize who is working on what, to eliminate waste and
duplication. Something like goes on in the Linux world to some extent.

Java has Sun. VB and VC++ has MS. Ada used to have the defense department,
but it divorsed it after more than 20 years difficult marriage. 
(btw, I think the Linux ALT group are doing a great job, may be they
can drive more Ada projects like this one, and people will help them). 

I have nothing against the cowboy mentaility of, if you don't like something,
go re-write it, sure, this works for small stuff, but for large complicated
stuff, be real, it will not work.  
 
Ok, I don't like windows, I am going now to go rewrite it.

Mich.

Re: Linux Kernel in Ada. Repost

[Tarjei Tj�stheim Jensen]

Mich@western_world_somehwere wrote :
>Do you think it is trivial to write a fully working Ada posix binding?
>by saying just go read a book to do it, shows that you really do not
>know what is involved here. Have a look at the current Ada binding posix
>code just to see what is there. Remember, you have to implement all
>the posix standard, not just 5 easy little functions.

Please readjust your expectations. It is usually not neccessary to implement
the full Posix to write an application. I have done the same with a part of the
OS/2 API that I wanted to use. It is work, but not neccessarily a lot of work.

>Ada's problem is that there is no central group that handles it as far as
>devloping API's, libraries, etc.. and to coordinates things. This central
>group can then organize who is working on what, to eliminate waste and
>duplication. Something like goes on in the Linux world to some extent.


That is entirely true. There is a tendency to do everything the official way.
That means that nothing happens for years. However there is hope; there are
people who seem to spend a lot of time creating Ada code for the common public.

It would be nice to have an library architect (or a number of them) for
mainstream Ada (mainstream here means general computing). It may very well be
that this is required for Ada to reach the big time in our lifetime.

>Java has Sun. VB and VC++ has MS. Ada used to have the defense department,
>but it divorsed it after more than 20 years difficult marriage.
>(btw, I think the Linux ALT group are doing a great job, may be they
>can drive more Ada projects like this one, and people will help them).


Gnat has done more for Ada than anything else the DoD has ever done. If Ada
goes fully mainstream it will probably be professor Dewars fault :-) This does
not belittle what others have done, just an acknowledgement that Gnat is the
foundation.


Greetings,

OpenToken project announcement

[dennison]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
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In article <7enpj3$je53@ftp.kvaerner.com>,
  "Tarjei Tj�stheim Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.no> wrote:

> That means that nothing happens for years. However there is hope; there are
> people who seem to spend a lot of time creating Ada code for the common
public.
>

In that vein, I'd like to announce the initial release of the token analysis
packages I developed at my work to the Ada OpenSource community, under the
aegis of the OpenToken Project. A webpage for the project is at
http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/OpenToken/OpenToken.html ).

The goal of the project is to further the development of the reusable
exensible token analysis packages, and eventually to provide similar packages
to support parsing activites.

The initial version of the pacakges is downloadable from the web page in
gnu-zipped and Windows zipped forms. It currently contains only a small readme
file for documentation, and generic tokenizer objects for character sets,
identifiers, integer literals, real literals, keywords, and line comments.

In the next release I hope to provide a simple example, and perhaps more
documentation and recognizers. Any help anyone can provide in these areas
(particularly new recognizers) would be greatly appreciated, of course.

I'd also like to have input from people who have experience in writing
compilers on the algorithms used in this package. Until I can generate some
benchmarks against lex-generated analyziers, that is my only way of
evaluating the advisability of the approach I took for the analysis engine.
But I do realize such folk tend to be incredibly busy.

I'd like to take a moment to list the motivations that caused this release:

FlightSafety's decision to release this code seemed to be based on (this is
*not* an official company statement!):

  o  The possibility of increasing the utility and stability of the package
without dedicating its own manpower to do so.
  o  A percieved moral obligation to put something back into the OSS community
that they derive so much benifit from.

My reasons for wanting to release this code as OSS are:
  o  The ability to use this highly useful tool no matter where my career may
take me.
  o  It seemed like a good project to base my master's thesis on. :-)


T.E.D.

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