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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,ac55ec18f7b0a53c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-06-04 14:38:08 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.ems.psu.edu!news.telebeam.net!washdc3-snf1!washdc3-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!feeder.qis.net!btnet-peer!btnet-peer0!btnet!news5-gui.server.ntli.net!ntli.net!news11-gui.server.ntli.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Sender: mjw@golux Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada and embedded applications References: <9fgnrm$auh$1@nh.pace.co.uk> From: Matthew Woodcraft Message-ID: <87ofs4ue02.fsf@chiark.greenend.org.uk> User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: 04 Jun 2001 22:33:17 +0100 NNTP-Posting-Host: 213.107.104.73 X-Complaints-To: abuse@ntlworld.com X-Trace: news11-gui.server.ntli.net 991690385 213.107.104.73 (Mon, 04 Jun 2001 22:33:05 BST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 22:33:05 BST Organization: ntl Cablemodem News Service Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:8100 Date: 2001-06-04T22:33:17+01:00 List-Id: "Chris Campbell" writes: > Out of interest GNAT is based upon GCC i think and GCC compiles things > to an intermediate form -- a RTL -- (is this right?) Not quite - RTL is processor-specific. There is a processor-independent intermediate form, but it comes earlier in the compilation process than RTL. > so all you'd really need to do is port specific parts of GNAT to the > OS if any on the new processor and have a GCC backend that compiles to > that processor. It seems like it really wouldn't take that long after > you've got this. Is my understanding of this all barmy? That's more-or-less right. Creating a GCC back end for a new processor is a decent-sized job, but in most cases one will already exist, and the 'only' effort would be making it work with GNAT. That's very little effort compared with writing an Ada compiler from scratch, for sure, but nonetheless I guess it's tricky to do correctly. -M-