Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

["Marin David Condic" <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org>]

A commercial RTOS would most likely be doing a whole lot more than an Ada
RTK, so a comparison would be unfair. An Ada RTK only needs to supply task
scheduling, time and whatever low-level subprograms are needed to support
compilation. *Maybe* I/O, but it is certainly not required. A commercial
RTOS is probably supplying all sorts of device drivers and other I/O related
things that are not needed for Ada support.

Of course, there is nothing to stop one from using Ada on a commercial
RTOS - except for possibly finding a compiler that targets the board & the
RTOS - and getting it at a reasonable price - and feeling comfortable that
it will actually work without too many serious bugs - and getting
appropriate support tools that work with the compiler/RTOS/board/development
platform - and not having to cobble all those things together on your own
from bits & pieces downloaded from the internet - and getting support from a
vendor so when the unforseen problems arise, there's someone knowledgeable
around to bail your project out of the deep water - and getting your
personnel trained up on Ada and flogged into using something they hate - and
convincing your boss that it isn't going to add cost, time or risk to the
project, but will instead bring about immense new profits. Did I miss
anything? :-)

Seriously, it really is pretty hard to get Ada into some embedded shop where
it has not been used before and doesn't have a firm belief that it is going
to do some significant good to make it worth the risks. Even if there isn't
outright hostility to Ada, a lot of pieces have to be in place just to make
the playing field equal and *still* there is risk with unproven technology,
so there *must* be some significant perceived advantage. If Ada wants to
worm its way into embedded computing and come out with a ranking above
"other" in the "Language Of Choice" surveys, a *lot* of work would have to
be done.

MDC
--
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
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John R. Strohm <strohm@airmail.net> wrote in message
news:49BFB7592CBCCE76.BF5F1FAC531DF3EC.585B6F261FE1D006@lp.airnews.net...
>
> Back when I was doing Ada, on whatever platform, the runtime was part of
the
> total Ada toolset package.  It came already integrated with the rest of
the
> toolkit.  The customer normally had to write a board support package to
> integrate the runtime with the peculiar target hardware, but you have to
do
> that with EVERY executive (unless your hardware is COMPLETELY
> off-the-shelf - very rare in military embedded systems - and the vendor
> already supplied you a HIGH-QUALITY BSP to go with your boards - also very
> rare in embedded systems).
>
> And, for the record, a competently-written Ada runtime fits in about 4K.
> (4K bytes on a byte machine, 4K words on a word machine, 4K whatever on a
> whatever machine.)  (Ichbiah made that statement in an Ada training video
I
> saw back in about 1990 or 1991.  I checked it for the TI 320C30 Ada
toolset
> from Tartan Labs, and it was dead on target.)
>
> I don't know how much VxWorks or LynxOS takes.  Anyone have the numbers
> handy?
>
>
>