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From: Jacob Sparre Andersen <jacob@jacob-sparre.dk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: disruptors of & inventory of Ada compilers and latest their era
 of ISO8652 compliance
Date: Mon, 14 May 2018 15:10:51 +0200
Organization: JSA Research & Innovation
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Date: 2018-05-14T15:10:51+02:00
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Dan'l Miller wrote:

> 1) AdaCore's GNAT Pro
>    - Ada2012 plus (some?) emerging Ada2020
>    - very actively maintained

You could say so.

> 2) FSF GNAT in GCC
>    - Ada2012
>    - sporadically maintained (i.e., bleeding-edge combination of
>      current-wavefront GCC backend with effectively retrofitted AdaCore
>      GNAT front-end from an older release of GCC)

Nope.  Changes are continously - except when GCC has a code freeze -
ported from the internal GNAT Pro development branch to the public GCC
development branch.  (My understanding.  I'm neither working for FSF nor
for AdaCore.)

> 3) FSF GNAT for LLVM
>    - Ada2012
>    - unstable & experimental by one developer in 2017

I wouldn't count that as a compiler.

> 4) RR Software's Janus Ada
>    - Ada1995 plus partial Ada2005
>    - actively maintained

There's support for some Ada 2012 in Janus/Ada.  Sometimes I think Randy
spends too much time here, instead of improving Janus/Ada. ;-)

> 5) Tartan Ada (DDC-I)
>    - Ada1983 (Ada1995 work by Tartan didn't survive acquisitions?)
>    - legacy only(?) for DSPs & TI processors

I don't know about Tartan Ada, but DDC-I sells Ada 95 compilers for a
number of targets: https://www.ddci.com/products_score/

> 6) PTC's ApexAda (formerly IBM Rational Ada)
>    - Ada2005
>    - actively maintained
> 7) PTC's ObjectAda (formerly Aonix's ObjectAda)
>    - Ada1995(?)
>    - actively maintained

PTC has three Ada compilers they are selling.  Two of them are
supposedly in active development, but I can't remember which.

> 8) HPE's Ada (formerly DEC's Ada)
>    - Ada1995(?)
>    - legacy only on OpenVMS

Not something I've heard of.

> Are there any others still extant?

Green Hills Software still sells the Green Hills Ada (95) compiler.

XGC Technology sells four variants of their Ada 95 compiler.

> Is it true that absolutely no Ada compiler vendor other than the 3
> variants of GNAT (counting the LLVM one as a limping-along 3rd
> variant) have achieved the bulk of the Ada2012 feature-set in
> approximately six years?

You would have to check with PTC and RR Software, to hear if they have
implemented "the bulk" of Ada 2012 yet.  PTC are implementing Ada 2012
features prioritised according to the needs of their customers (whatever
that means).

> What disruptors are foreseeable to change any of this significantly?
> - fresh new Ada compiler (e.g., Byron)
> - drastically-divergent fork of GNAT
> - faster Ada-compiler development at RR Software or PTC so that they
>   support Ada2012 and Ada2020 by, say, 2023?
> - resurrection of effectively dormant source code bases at HPE or
>   Tartan/DDC-I?

The third option seems most likely.  RR Software has already implemented
some Ada 2012 support, and they clearly intend to expand it.

I think it is unlikely that somebody can get sufficient funding to
create a new Ada compiler from scratch.

I can't see the point in forking GNAT, and DDC-I & co. seem quite happy
milking their existing customers, so don't expect anything from them.
And given what you pay for a PTC Object Ada license, I can't see how
they can get enough customers to fund any serious development.  And it
doesn't seem like their management is interested in making an investment
(unlike RR Software).

Greetings,

Jacob
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