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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,f92fbb4a0420dd57 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,f92fbb4a0420dd57 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: some questions re. Ada/GNAT from a C++/GCC user Date: 1996/03/27 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 144630096 references: organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++ Date: 1996-03-27T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Bill asked: The Ada Programming FAQ pooh-poohs STL, but I like it. (Yes, I know I could write my own versions of what I need, but a bunch of Ada programmers shouldn't need to be told that that's not the ideal solution.) This FAQ also says the Booch components library is coming Those opinions do not represent the opinions of all in the Ada community by any means. The STL is a remarkable piece of work in my opinion. There is some very nice work going on at Rensaleer rewriting STL in Ada. Does GNAT completely implement generics as defined in the standard? Yes I *assume* that GNAT supports exceptions completely You assume correctly I didn't notice anything about garbage collection in the GNAT docs, so I assume it doesn't support it. Will GNAT support GC in the foreseeable future? We have no such plans. Several volunteers have mentioned projects to this effect. Perhaps you would like to help in this area! How well does GDB work with GNAT output? Very well. We have used GDB for years to debug GNAT itself, and many of our customers have used it to debug large programs. There are areas where improvements are possible and planned, particularly in the tasking area. You assume correctly I didn't notice anything about garbage collection in the GNAT docs, so I assume it doesn't support it. Will GNAT support GC in the foreseeable future? We have no such plans. Several volunteers have mentioned projects to this effect. Perhaps you would like to help in this area! How well does GDB work with GNAT output? Very well. We have used GDB for years to debug GNAT itself, and many of our customers have used it to debug large programs. There are areas where improvements are possible and planned, particularly in the tasking area. Is it possible to get GDB to interactively call arbitrary procedures/functions from GNAT-generated code? Yes. When I make two different instantiations of a generic package with the same arguments, I understand the compiler treats them formally as two different packages, which is OK with me. However, I'd appreciate knowing the compiler wouldn't actually output two redundant copies of the corresponding (identical?) machine code, but instead share the code. It is not easy in general to share code. GNAT always generates separate code which results in optimizing time at the expense of space. There are no plans to change this. (Note of course that plans can always be changed by customers with requirements and $$$$) Can someone give me an idea what kind of compilation speed I could expect from GNAT on a 486DX2/66 with 20 Mb of RAM, for projects of 1,000-50,000 lines? Why not just try it? the cost of a trial copy of GNAT is not expensive! Generally we see compilation speeds of several thousand lines a minute on such machines, but there are many variables. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies