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From: Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Weakness of Ada is expensive / security / etc. ? Anything else?
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2015 11:34:04 -0700
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Date: 2015-07-20T11:34:04-07:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes:
>> Is that basically the FOSS segment of GNAT, with some support added?
> Yes, as far as I can see, it's the same bits you get as part of Red
> Hat Enterpise Linux (and CentOS is built from pretty much the same
> sources).  It's based on the FSF version, so you get the GNAT run time
> exception.

Fair enough, though that level of support doesn't seem that useful
(downloading FSF GNAT to my laptop and getting it working wasn't
difficult).  I guess GPL SPARK is not included.

> Production support (after deployment) is separate, and Red Hat will
> support deployment on Red Hat Enterprise Linux only, I assume.

I wonder if anyone is using it for real.

> So this is certainly not an option for small-device embedded
> development, or high-assurance software.  But for those markets,
> AdaCore's pricing is not unreasonable, I think.

The number I heard was at least 10x higher than single-seat licenses of
competing C/C++ and Forth products that I know of.  It does come with 5
seats minimum, but that's not of much use to a solo developer.  I also
don't know how much more you have to pay for the add-on tools that make
the product more interesting (SPARK Pro, CodePeer, etc.)

I'm not exactly criticizing AdaCore since they're probably doing the
right thing for their target market (aerospace companies, high-dollar
critical systems, etc).  But it seems to leave an unfilled need for the
low-budget embedded developer who wants a better language than C.