Re: Is the "Ada mandate" being reconsidered?

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Tom said

"Ah, well perhaps I am too tied to the "old" Ada business.  It used to be that
before you could claim you even had a product you would perform a validation
on the compiler.  This put you on the "validated compilers list", a form
of advertising.  It was also recognized that validation was merely the first
step of producing an Ada product.  I mean validation doesn't even require you
to produce a debugger!  It doesn't address the quality of the generated code
at all.  But, validation does at least test that the compiler does successfully
process the Ada language (at least to some minimal level).
"

Yes, you are too tied to the old Ada business.

Sure validation is important, but during the transition period to Ada 95,
it is less important than in the traditional Ada 83 setting.

Also validation does not mean so much during the transitional period. Of
14 compilers in the validated compiler list right now, several (6?) pass
NONE of the Ada 95 tests, they are Ada 83 compilers only. 

If you need an Ada 95 compiler, you have to figure out what the best choice
is. In some cases, a non-validated compiler may be the best choice. For
example, you may do better to get a full language compiler that is not
validated yet, than a validated compiler which does not implement any
of the Ada 95 features yet.

Eventually (a year from now), the validation procedures will fall more in
line with what you are used to, but right now, validation does not have quite
the same significance that you are used to.

This deinitely causes some confusion! There are government projects that
require Ada 95 and require a validated compiler, and will find that
right now, if they stick to the valiated compiler list, they will be
forced to choose a compiler that implements NONE of the Ada 95 features.

I expect that a lot more compilers will show up on the list soon. We could
validate a lot of targets with GNAT very soon if that were our highest
priority, but we will probably wait will we can do a bunch together
(we will certainly be validating the Alpha VMS version later this year,
and probably several others).

RObert Dewar
ACT