Re: ACT announces availability of GNAT 3.14p

["Jeffrey Creem" <jeff@thecreems.com>]

"Leon Winslow" <leon.winslow@eliminatespam.notes.udayton.edu> wrote in
message news:3C5CEFCE.D41ABFFF@eliminatespam.notes.udayton.edu...

stuff deleted but here is the part he was talking about:

> >
> > The above are the official platforms, but in practice the
> > NT version works reasonable well on Win 98 and Win ME and
> > other versions of GNU Linux including Debian GNU/Linux are
> > known to be compatible with this version of GNAT.


> I can understand the reason for limiting ACTs work to Windows NT, but
> this is also one of the  reason that Ada is "sliding into oblivion."
> The majority of the programming is being done on Windows platforms other
> than NT and 2K.  (MS has already announced dates for dropping all suport
> of these two platforms.).  A compiler that works "reasonably well" in
> W98, XP or Me is never going to be used on those platforms for any
> serious work.
>
> Alas, I knew Ada well and hate to see it go down hill, but ....
>
> Lee Winslow
>

I hate to (or perhaps love to) sound like a www.slashdot.com person here but
don't most programs only work "reasonable well" on  98, Me.

But seriously.. First of all you have the incorrect grouping of OS's since
you correctly
group NT and 2000 but then put XP with 98 and ME.   XP is an NT/2000
followon not a
95, 98, ME follow on.

Second, when it comes to reasonable well on previous verions of the compiler
I have never
run into (in the past) a case where it did not just work 100% (although I am
sure there are some). The
new release includes GVD (debugger) which does have some issues on the older
OSs so this is probably
more true now than it was in the past..

Having said that, in terms of real marketshare for developers...Most
developers are on the NT path but
the execuables out of GNAT have always worked just fine on the 95 line of
OSs.