Re: Ada and Automotive Industry

[eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)]

In article <dewar.850943380@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

   (I said:)

   "   A half million dollars to port a compiler is in the noise, but what
   isn't in the noise is the time required.  If the compiler isn't ready
   on time, you have all those programmers twiddling their thumbs."

   Robert Dewar said:

  > Sure, but the absolute time to achieve a port with GNAT is also very
  > much reduced compared to previous technology.

   Amen!  If it wasn't clear before, that was exactly my point.  The
cost of the port can be academic if you can't guarantee that the
compiler will be ready in time.  I'd want a lot of time for an 8051
GNAT target, but for many other potential targets (especially if gcc
has already been ported) it is possible to get something up and
running in a week.  You may spend the next several months getting it
thoughly wrung out and tested, getting the some of the annex support
working, building high-level bindings to OS specific libraries, etc.,
but without much schedule risk involved.  (In case that last part is
confusing, there are parts of the annexes that you can spend a lot of
time on if you care, for example Interfaces to COBOL, or tweaking the
numerics performance.  But there shouldn't be any schedule risk early
in a project from that.  Most of the GNAT annex code ports with the
compiler with no extra effort.)

--

					Robert I. Eachus

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