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 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.unit0.net!cyclone03.ams2.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!voer-me.highwinds-media.com!post02.fr7!fx15.fr7.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Brian Drummond Subject: Re: Newcomers to comp.lang.ada: welcome and how did you end up here ? Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada References: <87h9zdpi84.fsf@ixod.org> User-Agent: Pan/0.139 (Sexual Chocolate; GIT bf56508 git://git.gnome.org/pan2) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 62.49.20.82 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Trace: 1412877870 62.49.20.82 (Thu, 09 Oct 2014 18:04:30 UTC) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 18:04:30 UTC Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 18:04:30 GMT X-Received-Body-CRC: 2408301771 X-Received-Bytes: 2316 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:22285 Date: 2014-10-09T18:04:30+00:00 List-Id: On Thu, 09 Oct 2014 14:31:54 +0100, Simon Wright wrote: > Mark Carroll writes: > >> Ada does look good but, as far as I can tell, if I ever want to use it >> for any software not to be distributed under the GPL,... > If you are prepared to use the FSF GCC unsupported (except by the > goodwill of folk here, on Stack Overflow, and on IRC somewhere), and you > can get hold of a build with Ada enabled (Debian Linux (easy), > probably other Linux distributions, Mac OS X, ...) then you can develop > code and release binaries under any licence that you want: > see GCC Runtime Library Exception[1], Rationale document and Frequently > Asked Questions[2]. On the subject of mingw, I don't know how many people know of this option, but I was a little surprised to see mingw packages, including FSF Gnat, available on Debian. Turns out it's a cross-compiler. So having developed an Ada app on Debian, I can invoke the mingw crosscompiler and build a Windows executable. So far these have worked flawlessly, including interfacing between Ada and a C library talking to a USB device. The executable is larger - typically 800k instead of 150k for native Linux executables. Haven's investigated why but I assume it's statically linked to eliminate dependencies, and I haven't had to install anything other than the exe on Windows machines so far. One more option and probably the simplest way to use FSF GCC targetting Windows machines... - Brian