Re: Ada on Android and iOS?

[coding.rascal@gmail.com]

Hi John,

Thanks for all the great info, and a BIG thanks for coming out with GNATDroid. =) 

Yeah, I figured I was being a bit too naive on this whole cross compiling effort, especially to get Ada going. 

1) How were you able to figure out that you needed to patch GCC? Was it like the build would fail and you had to dig into the GCC code and figure out what the offending code was trying to do? Or was it more like the cross compiler built successfully but the ACATS failed and you dug into the assembler to figure out why it failed? I've never patched a compiler before, nor have I ever taken a compiler course in college.

2) What did you mean when you said "I had to implement the target and some functionality"? Did you have to implement something in the GNAT run time to use an Android sub-system?

3) For the target header files, did you use the NDK header files and combined them with newer Linux headers from somewhere else like I did?
 
I'll take a look at the GNATDroid make files as you suggested. BTW, is there a mailing list or something that you and anyone else involved with GNATDroid
collaborate on? I think it would be interesting to find out what goes behind the scene of maintaining GNATDroid.

- Coding Rascal

On Wednesday, January 22, 2014 8:55:53 AM UTC-8, jrmarino wrote:

<snip>
>
> I'm the creator of gnatdroid (Ada crosscompiler from FreeBSD/DragonFly to Android).  At least with gcc 4.6 and 4.7, GNAT doesn't build "out of the box" for the android target.  For 4.6 I had to implement the target and some functionality, and as I found out yesterday, I have to do more for gcc4.7.
> 
> 
<snip>
>
> 
> > 1) Will the 6 step process I laid out above only lead me to a dead end? I know about GNATdroid. The main reason why I am trying to avoid using GNATdroid is because I am hoping I can figure out a common process that allows me to create toolchains for both Android and iOS (hopefully, with the need to simply switch between the set of header files between the two platforms).
> 
> 
> 
> You're at a dead-end because you think a stock gcc can build an ada compiler without patches.  You have some good news though:
> 
> 1) A couple of days ago I made GNATDroid use binutils 2.24 (nonfactor as 2.21 is just fine too)
> 
> 2) As we speak, and totally by coincidence, I'm running a testsuite on GNATDroid based on gcc 4.7.  The port will be updated today most likely.  It's on C9 right now, passed every test so far, but that was after I implemented additional functionality to the gcc 4.7 base on top of my previous patchset.