LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

[schizophonic]

I am a student, and I am looking for a free or inexpensive ADA
compiler. I have read that GNAT compiler is free, and I would like to
know your opinion about the quality of the compiler.

Thank you!

z

Re: LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

[Robert Dewar]

schizophonic (an interesting name!) asks

"I am a student, and I am looking for a free or inexpensive ADA
compiler. I have read that GNAT compiler is free, and I would like to
know your opinion about the quality of the compiler."

Well several major defence projects and commercial companies seem to 
think it is suitable for critical projects. Anyway, the nice thing about
free software is that you can try it out yourself. Just download the
appropriate version (there are many of them) from cs.nyu.edu, directories
pub/gnat, and either follow the directions very carefully, or if you do not
know enough to do installations of this kind, get an instructor or friend
who does know to help you.

Many Ada courses all over the country (including the one I teach) use
GNAT. It is full Ada 95, and will correspond fine to any Ada 95 text
you are using. If you are learning Ada 83, then (a) complain to your
instructor about obsolete languages and (b) use GNAT anyway with the
-gnat83 switch. This does not provide perfect Ada 83 semantics, but it
will likely be good enough for your use.

Re: LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

[schizophonic]

dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote:

>schizophonic (an interesting name!) asks

(the name is taken from a Robben Ford's record - really wonderful,
try it!)

>"I am a student, and I am looking for a free or inexpensive ADA
>compiler. I have read that GNAT compiler is free, and I would like to
>know your opinion about the quality of the compiler."

>Well several major defence projects and commercial companies seem to 
>think it is suitable for critical projects. Anyway, the nice thing about
>free software is that you can try it out yourself. Just download the
>appropriate version (there are many of them) from cs.nyu.edu, directories
>pub/gnat, and either follow the directions very carefully, or if you do not
>know enough to do installations of this kind, get an instructor or friend
>who does know to help you.

This is true, in teory.
In practice, when one has an Internet access in Italy , and has to
download software from the other side of the world, it is wiser to ask
before spending whole days downloading (as in my case).
By the way, do you know if there is any mirror site of GNAT in Europe?

>Many Ada courses all over the country (including the one I teach) use
>GNAT. It is full Ada 95, and will correspond fine to any Ada 95 text
>you are using. If you are learning Ada 83, then (a) complain to your
>instructor about obsolete languages and (b) use GNAT anyway with the
>-gnat83 switch. This does not provide perfect Ada 83 semantics, but it
>will likely be good enough for your use.

I will complain, if is the case.

Re: LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

[Linda Matlack]

schizophonic@iol.it wrote:


>>Many Ada courses all over the country (including the one I teach) use
>>GNAT. It is full Ada 95, and will correspond fine to any Ada 95 text
>>you are using. If you are learning Ada 83, then (a) complain to your
>>instructor about obsolete languages and (b) use GNAT anyway with the
>>-gnat83 switch. This does not provide perfect Ada 83 semantics, but it
>>will likely be good enough for your use.

>I will complain, if is the case.

We are using the Feldman/Koffman Ada 95 book, but learning Ada 83
because our school won't update the computers to Ada 95.  Talk about
confusing!  We are complaining!

Re: LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

[Robert Dewar]

"We are using the Feldman/Koffman Ada 95 book, but learning Ada 83
because our school won't update the computers to Ada 95.  Talk about
confusing!  We are complaining!"


Note that you can download GNAT for yourself and run it on your own PC.
Versions for pretty much all PC operating systems (eight or nine in all)
are available for ftp from cs.nyu.edu directory pub/gnat.

Re: LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

[Dave Wood]

Linda Matlack wrote:
> 
> We are using the Feldman/Koffman Ada 95 book, but learning Ada 83
> because our school won't update the computers to Ada 95.  Talk about
> confusing!  We are complaining!

Too bad you bought the book already.  Within the next
few weeks you will find a special edition of ObjectAda
for Windows tucked into the back of the Feldman book
when you buy it at your local academic bookstore (or
your local Computer City, for that matter), so you won't
need to wait for your school to upgrade to Ada 95!  The
HTML version of the Feldman text is also integrated into
ObjectAda itself - sort of a quasi-recursion, I suppose.

-- Dave Wood
-- Product Manager, ObjectAda for Windows
-- Thomson Software Products
-- http://www.thomsoft.com

Re: LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

[Samuel Tardieu]

>>>>> ">" == schizophonic  <schizophonic@iol.it> writes:

> This is true, in teory. In practice, when one has an Internet
> access in Italy , and has to download software from the other side
> of the world, it is wiser to ask before spending whole days
> downloading (as in my case). By the way, do you know if there is
> any mirror site of GNAT in Europe?

Sure! One of them is ftp://ftp.ibp.fr/pub/gnat/
Note that you can find a (not exhaustive) list of GNAT mirrors on
http://www.gnat.com. 

  Sam
-- 
  Samuel Tardieu -- sam@ada.eu.org

Re: LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

[Robert Dewar]

Schizophonic asks

"This is true, in teory.
In practice, when one has an Internet access in Italy , and has to
download software from the other side of the world, it is wiser to ask
before spending whole days downloading (as in my case).
By the way, do you know if there is any mirror site of GNAT in Europe?"

Well practice is sometimes more valuable that theory :-)
If you go to the cs.nyu.edu site, you will find a complete list of
mirror sites, including more than one in Europe.

Re: LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

[Jon S Anthony]

In article <53qpki$d1h@mikasa.iol.it> schizophonic@iol.it writes:

> I am a student, and I am looking for a free or inexpensive ADA
> compiler. I have read that GNAT compiler is free, and I would like to
> know your opinion about the quality of the compiler.

Extremely good.  More than good enough for significant commercial work.

/Jon
-- 
Jon Anthony
Organon Motives, Inc.
Belmont, MA 02178
617.484.3383
jsa@organon.com

Re: LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

[tmoran]

In <54ejmt$7qn@mtinsc01-mgt.ops.worldnet.att.net> Linda Matlack said:
>We are using the Feldman/Koffman Ada 95 book, but learning Ada 83
>because our school won't update the computers to Ada 95.  Talk about
  Do you mean the physical computers have too little RAM to run the
compiler that came with the book, or what?  There are great differences
in hardware requirements of different vendor's Ada compilers.

Re: LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

[Robert Dewar]

tmoran said

"  Do you mean the physical computers have too little RAM to run the
compiler that came with the book, or what?  There are great differences
in hardware requirements of different vendor's Ada compilers."

No Ada compiler comes with the book, that may change in the future, but
certainly the version in my students hands is paper only! Furthermore,
the version that comes with the book is far from being a universal
platform compiler (I am talking about future versions of the book!)
so it may not just be a matter of too little RAM, for example the
students may be running on Alpha's!

Re: LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <dewar.845939710@merv>, dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> tmoran said
> 
> "  Do you mean the physical computers have too little RAM to run the
> compiler that came with the book, or what?  There are great differences
> in hardware requirements of different vendor's Ada compilers."
> 
> No Ada compiler comes with the book, that may change in the future, but
> certainly the version in my students hands is paper only! Furthermore,
> the version that comes with the book is far from being a universal
> platform compiler (I am talking about future versions of the book!)
> so it may not just be a matter of too little RAM, for example the
> students may be running on Alpha's!

That future compiler should certainly be written in Ada,
and be able to emit Java bytecode,
and be fed to itself emitting such bytecode,
with the result promoted as a universal platform Ada compiler :-)

Larry Kilgallen

Re: LOOKING FOR AN ADA COMPILER

[FerretWoman]

tmoran@bix.com wrote:

>
>  Do you mean the physical computers have too little RAM to run the
>compiler that came with the book, or what?  There are great differences
>in hardware requirements of different vendor's Ada compilers.

The school cannot decide which Ada 95 compiler they want to use and
the professor's do not have the time to update at this point.  That's
what I was told.  But also true, we usually have to restart the
computer without anything else running to use the program on a lot of
the school's computers.