Re: GNAT on Win 95

[Bob Crispen <revbob@EIGHT-BALL.HV.BOEING.COM>]

"Theodore E. Dennison" <dennison@ESCMAIL.ORL.MMC.COM> sez:

>> While I'm sort of on the same topic, I hope the relevant folks are
>> paying attention to the Win32 API that's in the process of coming
>> out, I believe through the Cygnus GnuWin32 folks.  There's an opportunity
>> for some synergy here, I believe.  I apologize for not knowing the
>> name of the author; this represents a tremendous amount of work.
>
>Hmm. I know there are already Win32 bindings for GNAT. I take it you
>are referring to some sort of effort to make gcc-native Win32 DLL's
>and .h's? That would indeed be "a tremendous amount of work". This
>would make it unnessecary to purchase a Microsoft or Borland
>compiler to do serious development on Windows NT and 95. That would
>be a major breakthrough.
>
>I'm unclear about what kind of "synergy" is needed, though. The
>Win32 bindings should work with either, right?

The synergy comes from the fact that two people (or perhaps groups
of people) are working on something that has common elements.  If
they were to get together and say "I'll do this; you do that," we
groveling (yet demanding) users might get both of them on our desks
a day or two faster.

Ditto for Cygnus and LabTek -- here we've got two groups of people
(saintly people) writing a gcc for Windows 95 and NT.  Both of them
compile C.  One of them compiles C++.  One of them compiles Ada 95.
It's a virtual certainty that the same problems are being solved twice.
It's also a virtual certainty that every day the two common cores of
the compilers move another millimeter farther apart, and the chances
of forever having to have two compilers on my machine increase another
hundredth of a percent.

Not only that, but (being an ignorant, yet carping outsider) I believe
it is only due to pure, blind luck that I can run my LabTek gnat
compiler under the Gnu tools from Cygnus (e.g., bash).  Will it be
true on the next release (and, btw, great current release, Tom!)?

It's not like Ada was Netscape, where there are billions to be made
and trade secrets make sense.  Even the market for programmers on
Win32 machines isn't that big -- at least Win32 programmers who'll
program in Ada despite the absence of Microsoft Visual Ada.  But
there's enough there for people to make a damn decent living, and
cooperation might help get things to market a little faster, improving
everyone's chances of retiring happily.

Bob Crispen
revbob@eight-ball.hv.boeing.com
Speaking for myself, not my company