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From: Bakin@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA ("David S. Bakin")
Newsgroups: net.lang.ada
Subject: Tom Welsh's problem with tasking in Alsys PC AT Ada
Message-ID: <860606124538.366236@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 6-Jun-86 08:45:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: MIT-MULT.860606124538.366236
Posted: Fri Jun  6 08:45:00 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Jun-86 14:22:53 EDT
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Organization: The ARPA Internet
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

I've already corresponding privately with Tom, but for those of
you who are handing by your fingernails wondering about tasking and
Alsys Ada:

In Alsys PC AT Ada you get a choice between using predefined libraries
that support tasking, and one that doesn't.  The latter is meant to be
used to satisfy users who don't want to use tasking in a particular
program and don't want to pay the space penalty (not too bad in any event)
in the runtime system for tasking.  Anyway, version 1.0, currently shipping,
has a bug in that it doesn't gracefully tell the user he is compiling tasking
constructs into a non-tasking library.  In fact, it will get one of several
different internal errors, as reported by Tom.  The solution is to recompile
after recreating the library as a tasking library.  Version 1.2, shipping
shortly, corrects this oversight.

(BTW:  I don't have the figures on the tip-of-the-fingers about how much
space is saved by using a non-tasking library, and there are also some
relatively minor savings in time due to different generated code, but the
Alsys salespeople know.)

I think we all agree that relatively calm and sane product reviews are
the province of Info-Ada, also that discussion of bugs and fixes is
sometimes appropriate, also that it is frequently interesting when a
manufacturer responds to a problem;  but I do urge people -- using whatever
product they're using -- to please contact the customer support organization
of the product's manufacturer first.  Everyone will end up feeling a lot
better.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:  This message is going out from the keyboard of my
home CP/M machine, and is not the official policy of Alsys, nor did they
review it in advance, nor give me permission, etc. etc.  I am an Alsys
employee, and on the PC AT Ada compiler team, yet I am prone to answering
mail my own way and not waiting for management approval.

-- Dave Bakin (Bakin -at mit-multics.arpa)