Re: GNAT link error

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

Robert Dunn said

"   Ok, here is what we got.  We ended up with some cheap compiler, GCC.
it is written for some goofy 8.3 file system.  It distinguishes between
upper and lower case.  Well, sort of.  Ada doesn't care about case.
GCC AUTOMATICALLY changes the package names to lower case.  Then it
complains that the filename does not match the package name.  This was
anoying but not heart stopping.  So there was a slight inconvenience
changing all the filenames to ALL lower case."


There seems to be some confusion on your part here. GNAT is not written
for a 8.3 file system, though it has the capability of living with such
limitations in systems that require it like DOS.

Unix certainly distinguishes between upper and lower case file names,
so the default choice of file names must be case specific on Unix
systems, of course it is not case specific on systems like DOS or
OS/2 which are not case sensitive.

The default file names are indeed all lower case, they can't follow the
casing you give, because then you would be forced to use consistent
casing in your with statements, and of course Ada does not require such
consistency. So there has to be some canonical rule.

If you don't like the default file names, then you don't need to change
the file names, instead just don't use the defaults. Instead use the
Source_File_Name pragma facility in the configuration file (gnat.adc)
to specify the file names that *you* would like to use.

The documentation (both gnatinfo.txt available with the public releases
of GNAT, and the SGI documentation, available from the webb site for sgi,
includes full descriptions of how to use the source file name pragma
facility.

As for your other problems, they sound like installation problems. If you
obtained the SGI version of the compiler, it includes SGI support, and you
should contact the SGI hot line for help -- I am just guessing you may be
an SGI customer, given your comment about getting hold of the SGI
documentation, but that was not clear from your message. Support for GNAT
is also available from Ada Cotre Technologies, but you have to be one of
our customers to obtain that support (send email to info@gnat.com for
details on our support).

In any case, I stronly recommend carefully reading the documentation,
end-to-end. GNAT is rather different from the Ada compiler environments
you are likely to be used to, and you will find it easier to adjust if
you read the documentation!

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies