Re: compile on a pc to a sparc

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

Tarjei asks (of my moving from OS/2 to Win95, I wondered if anyone would
pick up on that :-)

   Does this mean that there will be no more OS/2 releases of GNAT?
   It is important for me to know since I am planning to use that
   combination commercially. I am planning to buy a support contract
   for that work.

There certainly will continue to be OS/2 releases, because if nothing
else there are enthusiastic volunteers out there who will continue to
build releases. There are many ports of GNAT that we (ACT) do not
support. Note that I am not saying we won't continue to support OS/2,
but right now that is a possibility. It depends on commercial interest
as always. So Tarjei, and any other people interested in commercial
support of OS/2, should definitely get in touch (send email to
support@gnat.com). IBM has at this stage sent out very strong signals
that they no longer regard OS/2 as a general purpose strategic operating
system, but rather intend to concentrate in narrow vertical markets
(which makes sense, this is where OS/2 has been successful). For example,
they have no interest in whether general purpose software like GNAT is
or is not made available for OS/2. Of course if they have a big customer
who needs Ada on OS/2, then that would be different.

We chose OS/2 as a primary platform for OS/2 in the early days when it was
the only viable 32-bit operating system around. Now that is no longer true,
and indeed if we were making the decision again today, four years later,
I think it unlikely we would choose OS/2 with so many good alternatives
(Linux, Win95, NT, Solaris, and indeed the current 32-bit DOS with DJGPP).

   In what way is OS/2 makefiles different from other makefiles. I have mainly
   compiled OS/2 ready software so I have not done any work on makefiles.
                                                                     
OS/2 is not Unix! The standard makefiles for gcc assume Unix. You have two
choices in such situations. First you can make the OS look exactly like
Unix, or you can modify the makefile. In practice in OS/2, we do somewhere
in between the two, so for example our makefile has OS/2 specific commands
in it (like emxload), but also we have added Unixlike utilities to OS/2.