From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,30a9bb3017fa58dd X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1025b4,959627a08fbc77c5 X-Google-Attributes: gid1025b4,public From: Robert Dewar Subject: Re: GNAT versions ( was :Ada compiler for PC?) Date: 1999/04/30 Message-ID: <7gcmcp$16j$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 472733634 References: <7fndu7$im4$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <7g4oed$ko$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <7g5ju3$qpb$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <7gbjhg$s98$1@rtl.cygnus.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x9.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion X-Article-Creation-Date: Fri Apr 30 16:39:53 1999 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,gnu.misc.discuss X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-04-30T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <7gbjhg$s98$1@rtl.cygnus.com>, bothner@cygnus.com (Per Bothner) wrote: > I don't think it was a major factor that Kenner was also working for > ACT with the associated possible conflict of interest. However, > there was at least the perception that in a few case he made some > questionable decisions based on concerns about GNAT. For example, > C++ exception handling was delayed because Kenner had his own ideas > as to how it "ought" to be done. (I don't know what the technical > issues were. Maybe he was just too much of a perfectionist - this > is certainly a problem I'm all too familar with in myself.) It is probably fair to say that Kenner is a perfectionist. He thinks that things should be documented (Per says he does not know the issues, perhaps he should check :-) But one of the major issues with exception handling was indeed documentation, and in fact a special deal was done to put this into gcc without the documentation, accepting instead a promise that it would be done later! The concerns about exceptions had nothing at all to do with GNAT. This is simply a guess on Per's part, who as he says, does not know the issues. The concern was on technical issues (such as thread safety, which of course are language independent), and on the documentation issues. I think Per's continued implications that perhaps Richard was working deliberately against Cygnus interests because ACT was a competitor are pretty bogus on the face of it. ACT's interests have been very specifically in Ada (consider the name of the company!) And as far as we know Cygnus has had zero interest in Ada. In practice, the issue was indeed to a considerable extent one of too much work for any one person. ACT funded a lot of Richard Kenner's time to work on gcc in practice, so that it could indeed be his day job, but even so, there is a lot for one person to do, and furthermore, it is pretty hard to please everyone in a situation like this. But in general I would advise Per to investigate thoroughly the circumstances of both EGCS at the start, and the exception issues, before making guesses. Even with the disclaimers that he does not know the issues, such guesses can be misleading. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own