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: 103376,be5488f6afc9d0dd X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Please, Not MachTen! (Was: learning Ada on a Mac) Date: 1996/08/10 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 173467429 references: <320CC438.6A7B@helios.cs.uoregon.edu> organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-08-10T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Spencer said "I was pleased to see that GNAT was available on the Mac platform. I was tickled pink! I quickly followed the link, and. . . . . .was very disappointed. The fact that the GNAT Ada compiler was available was heartening, but that it needs MachTen to run in is not." Our experience with Machten is much more positive, probably you were working with an early version, this system is very much in development mode, and each new version we have seen is much more complete and much more solid. Other people using the MAC port have had similar experience. As I mentioned before, we had essentially the choice between Machten which is close to a standard Unix, and therefore familiar to a lot of people, or using Apple's proprietary interface which is far less familiar. We certainly need a full featured command line interface for running gcc, and of course gcc hosts more cleanly under a unix interface anyway. The applications will run under System 7, but the compiler does require Machten. Anyway, maybe you should not give up on your *dream* so soon, and give Machten another try. Presumably if you have a license already, the upgrade is easily obtained. I think by the time the GNAT/Mac project is completed, in another 6 weeks or so, that the version of Machten that will be released soon after will be quite capable and quite affordable. Watch for details. P.S. The only other source for an Ada compiler on the Mac that I am familiar with (not counting some not well supported Ada 83 compilers that are still around) is the Intermetrics JBM based compiler. This is a subset so far (e.g. no tasking), but generates Java compatible output, which is interesting for some applications, and eventually a full implementation is planned.