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=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1d52a75fd633fefc X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-02-12 07:43:07 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!news.gv.tsc.tdk.com!falcon.america.net!news.mindspring.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp2.deja.com!nnrp1.deja.com!not-for-mail From: Ted Dennison Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada to C++ translator? Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 15:33:01 GMT Organization: Deja.com Message-ID: <968vnc$5a2$1@nnrp1.deja.com> References: <3A844255.24A4DBA3@lmco.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.48.27.130 X-Article-Creation-Date: Mon Feb 12 15:33:01 2001 GMT X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; 0.7) Gecko/20010109 X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x61.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 204.48.27.130 X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDtedennison Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:5169 Date: 2001-02-12T15:33:01+00:00 List-Id: In article <3A844255.24A4DBA3@lmco.com>, Robert Brantley wrote: > Any recommendations on a Ada to C++ translator? We have no Ada > tasking constructs to deal with. (sigh) Poor guy. As you have probably gathered from all the snide comments, there isn't a program to do this. There are some around for C, but none for C++. The best I can think of would be to use one of those UML reverse-engieering tools to get UML from Ada, then use its code generator to spit back out C++. But I wouldn't suggest doing that. Most likely you'll just end up with the biggest mess the world has seen since my 3-year-old got into my old wargame boxes. I'd say we could probably provide more help if you told us what you are trying to accomplish by doing that, but that would probably just be opening yourself up to more abuse (when most likely its your managment that deserves the abuse). Translation tools can be used successfully in some circumstances, but they won't generally produce the kind of code you'd want to have to maintain for years to come. Most of the time some stuff won't translate very well, and will have to be hand-massaged on the output or on the input side. The process will probably introduce some new bugs, so you will have to redo all the code's testing, debugging, and acceptance phases. If the code is mission-critical, you will also want someone to go over the output with a fine-toothed comb to mare sure there aren't any obscure lurking nasties. Odds are any good developer who has to go through all this is going to be sorely tempted to rewrite the code anyway to make it into more idomatic C++. So its not going to be easy or cheap. Thus translation should be used as an emergency last resort, not as a magic wand. Now, I hate to join the Greek chorus here, but is it *truly* that much of an emergency? The only reason I could think of that would ever make it worth the effort would be if there were a platform out there that I *had* to use for some reason that had no Ada (or C) compiler available for it. -- T.E.D. http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/