Ada / Visual C++ Integration

[haughton1228@my-deja.com]

Any insight that anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated.

First some background.	We currently have an application implemented on a DEC
Alpha Unix platform, developed utilizing Rational Apex as our Ada IDE and
UIMX as our C-based X-Windows GUI generator.  We currently have thin bindings
between the Ada main programs and the C GUIs. We rename the C main to c_main
and call it at instantiation of the Ada executable to bring up the initial
display. Logic to support the displays is written either in C or Ada, with
the necessary externs and imports/exports to make this all work.

I am trying to understand how to set up a similar environment in the NT
world.	We would like to use Microsoft Visual C++ and MFC to re-create the
GUI (~100 non-trivial displays), adapt supporting C/C++ code from X-Windows
to Windows, and port the Ada code to the NT platform with as little change as
possible. Theoretically, with the right bindings and compiler/linker options,
I should be able to compile the C++ gui and Ada code and link the resulting
objects together into a single Ada executable. I have been prototyping using
GNU Ada.  The Win32Ada bindings there only implement the Win32 APIs, not MFC,
so I'm thinking that this would force me to use the lower level Win32 APIs to
interact with all of the MFC graphical objects created by VC++. The
documentation gives enough info to make me believe that this is possible, but
I haven't succeeded in making it work.

Another option could be to  use AFC bindings provided as part of Aonix
ObjectAda to write an Ada MFC-based application from scratch (like the
Prosise examples), but can I use AFC to create an Ada executable with a MFC
front end created using the Visual C++ GUI builder? I have been looking in
comp.lang.ada, as well as www.gnat.com, www.aonix.com, and www.adapower.com
and microsoft sites, and haven't found this specific question answered.  Are
there any other resources (web, print, etc.) that you could recommend? Would
a 'native' Ada gui builder (such as the one available from Aonix) be a better
solution?

TIA,
Jim Haughton


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