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From: Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: will ada always be supported by gcc?
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:39:33 +0100
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Date: 2011-11-21T22:39:33+01:00
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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.