From: Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>
Subject: Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:39:33 +0100
Date: 2011-11-21T22:39:33+01:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87y5v9tasq.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: dbdd7b64-d7d6-4255-8baf-1c0af85bf2ad@t38g2000prg.googlegroups.com
leo.brewin@internode.on.net writes:
> I've been a long time user of Pascal and I'm worried that my compiler
> of choice, gpc pascal for MacOSX, may fall over in the next release of
> MacOSX. The good folks that have supported gpc Pascal over the years
> are unlikely to do the job on an ongoing basis. So I need a plan B
> which currently is to port my roughly 1 million lines of code to Ada.
> My worry is that I might run into the same problem with Ada -- can I
> be sure that Ada will continue to be part of the GCC compiler suite
> for a long time?
The short answer is: yes.
There are two main reasons for that. First, because GCC is Free
Software, there will always be the possibility to recompile GCC from
sources, or to pay someone like me (:)) to do that for you.
Second, the Ada part of GCC is maintained by the company AdaCore, whose
customers use GNAT for projects with *very* long life cycles. For
example, it is quite normal for avionics equipment (hardware and
software) to be supported for 20 years -- still only half the expected
life time of the aircraft containing said avionics equipment. And I
wouldn't expect anyone to rewrite the controlling software of a working
nuclear power station "just because the language is old".
But I think your question really was: "can I be sure that Ada will
continue to be part of the GCC compiler suite *on MacOS X* for a long
time?" I cannot answer that definitively; for starters, Apple's GCC
does not support Ada at all; the existing GNAT for MacOS X is pretty
much a community project, AFAICT, and so is no better and no worse than
GPC on Mac OS X.
--
Ludovic Brenta.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2011-11-21 21:39 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2011-11-20 2:15 will ada always be supported by gcc? leo.brewin
2011-11-20 4:08 ` anon
2011-11-20 19:37 ` John B. Matthews
2011-11-21 19:31 ` Adam Beneschan
2011-11-21 20:39 ` Simon Clubley
2011-11-21 21:39 ` Ludovic Brenta [this message]
2011-11-21 22:17 ` Simon Wright
2011-11-23 2:28 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
2011-11-23 15:05 ` Robert A Duff
2011-11-21 22:07 ` Robert A Duff
2011-11-21 23:56 ` Randy Brukardt
2011-11-22 0:36 ` Adam Beneschan
2011-11-22 10:04 ` Patrick Jakubowski
2011-11-21 23:38 ` Jerry
2011-11-23 2:38 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
2011-11-22 20:07 ` Sebastian Doht
2011-11-23 3:00 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
2011-11-23 3:01 ` Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
2011-11-23 12:19 ` Chad
2011-11-24 18:08 ` Lucretia
2011-11-25 23:30 ` Jerry
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