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,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,ee887b7593f7961b X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!r37g2000prr.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Ivan Levashew Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada OS based on Minix3 Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:12:10 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 92.125.121.58 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1226304730 29647 127.0.0.1 (10 Nov 2008 08:12:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:12:10 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: r37g2000prr.googlegroups.com; posting-host=92.125.121.58; posting-account=SWSr0goAAABcqpu6T_j1x1_Ub5y2Ekfy User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2625 Date: 2008-11-10T00:12:10-08:00 List-Id: Cedric Lannock wrote: > As it has to few lines of code it should be > possible to build a kernel in overseeable time. Kernel isn't enough. Drivers, applications. And, the most essential thing, users' and developers' awareness, what's wrong with other OSes; what's wrong with GNU, Microsoft and Apple. I'm wondering what you're trying to achieve with Ada OS? Is it just a casting tech skills? Two general problems of starting an enterprise Ada project are as follows: Lack of libraries Lack of developers While you can do little about the second, you can at least do binding generators. There are 2 unfinished ones: GNATCOM and GNAT-SWIG. GNATCOM is part of GNAVI project. GNAVI was quite popular several years ago. GNATCOM fails to compile on latest GNAT (Ada 2005). I have succeded in making it running and created a demo Delphi+Ada webserver using it. One need to delete "-gnatg" option out of GNATCOM Makefiles and rename GNATCOM.Interface package to another name, e. g. COM_Interface. It will at least be working, but still not convenient to use (due to thinness of data types, e. g. one has to write Issue.Attach (DB_Access.Get_Issue); Rubrics.Attach (Issue.Get_Rubrics); instead of DB_Access.Issue.Rubrics). GNATCOM doesn't claim to be thick binding generator after all. Another unfinished stuff is GNAT-SWIG. It was started in 2006, when Ada 2005 implementation wasn't stable and complete. An essential thing like GNAT-SWIG should feel like Ada 2005, so it might need to be changed as well. Or, if you want to start from scratch, you have an option to make binding generator for XPCOM and UNO (OpenOffice.org). First will give a good crossplatform UI. Starting from v1.9, Gecko finally got Mac OS X right, and it's currently AFAIK the only UI engine that feels native on every OS. UNO bindings will enable Ada applications to portably manage Office documents. The work to be done is as hardcore as writing OS, yet indeed much more people would benefit from it. I don't think that something 100% Ada is a good idea because nowadays lorry number of such projects is very small. > > Another thought to get this project taking some speed would be not to > rewrite all the available C code but to develop a translator c2ada. It > would us getting startet and the resulting code could be enhanced and > improved. > I have a better idea: first, manually convert C code to Cyclone code (that's what Cyclone is really good for). Then it could be more easily translated into Ada code.