Re: State of the compiler market

[Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>]

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> writes:
> I think a better approach would be to convince an existing Ada 95 
> implementation to go open source and then enhance that to do the things 
> desired (Ada 2020 support, etc.). 

1. I found a few google hits for Ada 2020 but nothing like a concrete
list of changes or proposals.  Just "ARG is working on it".  Is there
anything public?

2. Is there really serious difficulty extending an Ada 95 compiler to
handle Ada 2012?

I'm a FOSS supporter myself, but in the case of an alternate Ada
implementation, I'd think the most interesting possibility would be for
someone (maybe Adacore) to team up with the CompCert guys and make a
verified Ada compiler.

> Figuring out Ada resolution rules, Ada tasking, the Ada optimization
> rules, and many other things will sap anyone of energy long before
> they complete it.

How bad is this really?  Is the ARM that hard to read (I've never
tried)?  On the surface Ada doesn't seem particularly harder than Java,
and certainly easier than C++.  But I haven't gone into the deeper
corners or used it much.