From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, LOTS_OF_MONEY,MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,b50bc6538a649497 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Robert Dewar Subject: Re: Ada student homework ? Date: 2000/11/19 Message-ID: <8v9l58$210$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 695544840 References: <8v906g$il0$1@nnrp1.deja.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x59.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.240 Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. X-Article-Creation-Date: Sun Nov 19 22:44:57 2000 GMT X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 2000-11-19T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article , tmoran@acm.org wrote: > Obviously. But is it really true that *any* app using the > facilities of MS Windows can be developed as easily, or > easier, with GtkAda? No, these are different tools, there are things that can be done more easily with CLAW, but there are also things that can be done more easily with GtkAda (in some respects the facilities of GtkAda are higher level than those in CLAW, but they certainly do not cover the full range of functionality). > > Is there a release sequence of > GtkAda versions that have been developed and tested with > multiple Ada Windows, and > instead tie you to ACT's Ada compiler? That's a bit confused, but I assume you are asking whether there are GtkAda versions that work with various Ada 95 compilers. For this you have to ask other vendors. Unlike the situation with a proprietary product like CLAW, anyone can take the sources and adapt and distribute this for their own compiler. ACT is in the business of making sure GtkAda works for GNU. However, we try to generally maintain compatibility. We are certainly aware that Rational for example has been at least fiddling with GtkAda, and we have been happy to cooperate with them on this. I was talking more of compatiblity between operating systems and architectures. We actually find that far more of our users are concerned with this kind of portability, than with portability to other compilers. > Portability is not cheap. Having worked on the development > testing of CLAW on four different Ada compilers, including > GNAT, ove the last few years I am acutely aware of that fact. > It's also true that software vendors usually have strong > economic incentives to promote lock-in to their products. Right, which is why open source development works well, it tends to counteract that. When sources are proprietary, people have little chance to deal with that problem. In your case, since CLAW is not open, you have to do all the work of making sure it works on multiple Ada compilers. In the case of GtkAda, different vendors can distribute that work among themselves. Since GtkAda is part of the GNU project, the primary target is of course GNU based tools (GNAT in particular), and now that the GtkAda developers work for ACT that is certainly their primary responsibility. However, as the release notes make clear we generally try to avoid any compiler dependencies, and when Rational has reported portability problems, we have been able to fix them in the public sources without any difficulties. Note that GNAT.HTable itself should be perfectly portable to other Ada compilers, and there is nothing to stop Ada vendors from taking components from the GNAT library (indeed for a while Aonix was distributing some of our Annex G components with their Ada 95 compiler, and may still be doing so for all I know, and that's perfectly fine, providing that this is made clear and appropriate licensing conditions are made clear to users (e.g. appropriate copy of the GPL distributed with the product). Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.