Re: CPAN style Ada repository

[Martin <martin@thedowies.com>]

On Friday, November 29, 2013 10:15:07 PM UTC, Georg Bauhaus wrote:
> On 29.11.13 20:22, Felix Krause wrote:
> 
> > The major problem is that from what I know, Ada code is not
> 
> > very portable between compilers (even the .ads/.adb naming
> 
> > convention is GNAT-specific).
> 
> 
> 
> The 1-unit convention (.ads [+.adb +-sub.adb]) has not caused
> 
> any problem for AdaMagic compilers (including ObjectAda
> 
> mentioned by Simon). The ones I know have been rather flexible
> 
> with regard to files and compilation units.
> 
> 
> 
> Some problems were not so much caused by the Ada source,
> 
> but by implementation specific attributes such as 'Img (intended
> 
> for debugging, but welcome by lazy typists, I suppose) or by
> 
> using types from the standard library such as Integer. These cause
> 
> portability issues that wouldn't be there if using just 'Image or
> 
> if defining integer types to match the problem domain; other
> 
> problems were caused by OS/GCC-specific linker pragmas in source
> 
> (these problems were removed by dropping the pramgas and adding
> 
> linker switches to build scripts instead).
> 
> 
> 
> Are there other typical causes that render Ada code non-portable
> 
> between Ada compilers? Compiler bugs I suppose, but these cannot
> 
> always be addressed by changing the source.
> 
> 
> 
> FWIW, adding to GNAT the ICC Ada95 Pretty Printer is free
> 
> and can be used for checking syntax, at the very least.
> 
> Maybe the pretty printer is updated someday to match the language
> 
> that ICC Ada currently supports (Ada 2005).
> 
> 
> 
> Also, http://build.ada-language.com/ can be a useful resource
> 
> for making Ada software translation portable.


Depends how good the original programmers were...for instance, a fairly typical problem when porting XD-Ada code to any Ada95+ compiler is that XD-Ada included non-standard types in package System...and unfortunately lots of programmers didn't know or didn't care and used them widely. Sigh.

Also, a classic non-Ada programmer type of thing to do would be to use Integer / Float everywhere (or those pesky XD-Ada System types!) thinking they were using C or something...

-- Martin