Re: Ada Dot Net ?

[Ingo Marks <adv@region-nord.de>]

WJT wrote:

> The real reason that I would like to have an Ada95 compiler on such a
> platform (and hopefully developed as a plug-in for MS Visual Studio) is
> well...just because. Because I've dedicated over 20 years of my life to
> the little lady (mostly using her in embedded systems) and would really
> like to see here catch the boat this time.
 
> I have earned the right to say that as far as I'm concerned Ada has always
> missed the mark, has always fallen short of the other languages when it
> comes to MS Windows development environments and tools. I would just like
> to see a vendor fully embrace what may be the last chance to 'get it
> right' when it comes to providing an Ada solution for serious MS Windows
> application development. If there is any vendor out their even attempting
> such an undertaking then God Bless and God Speed !!!

I don't know if any vendor plans to provide .NET support for Ada, but note 
the following statements:

1) DotGNU project http://www.gnu.org/projects/dotgnu/faq.html:

"1.16 What programming languages are supported in DotGNU?

  We want to support Java in the same way as C#/CLR (as per Microsoft's
  ECMA specs) will also be supported.  As soon as Parrot (the bytecode
  system of Perl6) is available, it will probably be added to the list
  of bytecode systems that we want to support.

  Note that with the support for Java bytecode, all other programming
  languages that can be compiled to Java bytecode will also be
  available, for example Ada95.  Also, all programs that are written
  for .NET (for example in Visual Basic) should work with DotGNU."

2) GNU GCC 3.1 will integrate the former Ada frontend into its core.
See http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc.html:

"Currently GCC contains front ends for C, C++, Objective C, Chill, Fortran, 
and Java as well as libraries for these languages (libstdc++, libgcj,...). 
The next major release, GCC 3.1, will also include an Ada front end."

3) Mono project (http://www.go-mono.org/faq.html):

"Question 62: Are you working on a GCC front-end to C#? A GCC backend that 
will generate CIL images? What about making a front-end to GCC that takes 
CIL images and generates native code? 

We are currently seeking volunteers for those projects."