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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,3869f0598191b11d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.comcast.com!news.comcast.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 19:35:07 -0500 Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 20:35:07 -0400 From: "Robert I. Eachus" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Porting ADA source References: <40FBBB16.8050206@noplace.com> <40fd03b4$1_1@baen1673807.greenlnk.net> <40FD0932.5080604@noplace.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.147.90.114 X-Trace: sv3-wIeEyowap1uQlvL04Z7RMVfwKWDGiPwY5na98fDpn9qBYE6/kN6cBk6Z28ca3UcNzNVQ7LjBi8noBxv!87nIY0JeOUkXty+SWrx21Tr2w0cT+G2S/ku54+w/A0PsM5xYovzqWKIOm54pZw== X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: dmca@comcast.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2297 Date: 2004-07-20T20:35:07-04:00 List-Id: Randy Brukardt wrote: > Case in point: when we ported Janus/Ada to the U2200 computers, we had to > change a lot of assumptions about the sizes of things. (We had of course > assumed character = byte = 8 bits, and of the U2200 was a 36-bit word > machine.) Rather than simply coding a different set of assumptions, we > decided to restructure everything so that the compiler depended on a small > set of packages that encoded host and target information. That eliminated > future redos for similar issues. I'm sure the customer would have been > happier in the short run if we hadn't restructured everything, but it meant > that virtually all bug fixes only needed to be made once -- a huge time > savings in the long run. I'll second Randy on this first. Quick and dirty gets to "sort of working" faster, but doing it right seems to get to working faster, and definitely gets to no bugs much faster. However, there is an issue here that may require living with two versions for a long-time: the need to compile using the DEC Ada compiler which AFAIK is Ada 83 only. I believe that GNAT is available for some Alpha OSes. (I don't know which Unix variant this is.) I think that the right path forward would be to migrate the code to GNAT, then use the GNAT version on the Alpha system. It may be a lot simpler than any other approach, and it certainly should reduce the support costs going forward. -- Robert I. Eachus "The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1821