The NT port of GNAT 3.09

The NT port of GNAT 3.09

[Robert Dewar]

This port, which will run on Windows 95 or on NT, is now available. It uses
a standard installation program to make installation a simple and automatic
process.

GNAT 3.09 for NT uses the Cygnus toolset, which provides a unix like
environment on NT, and allows both the development environment and runtime
environment on NT to be very similar to Unix. In particular, this means that
the standard makefiles can be used, and that cross-compilation from an NT
host will be possible.

The Cygnus toolset is in a beta release stage, so the 3.09 version of GNAT
should also be regarded as a beta release. We have encountered some problems
with the loader with large programs, which are now being investigated, but
we have decided to release this version in its current form since it seems
to be in pretty good shape. In particular, it can bootstrap GNAT fine, and
successfully runs all but one or two tests in the ACVC suite.

A current limitation of the release is that it *must* be installed on
drive C. It is not possible to successfully specify an alternative drive
for the installation.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Re: The NT port of GNAT 3.09

[Richard Kenner]

In article <dewar.854358699@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
>successfully runs all but one or two tests in the ACVC suite.

More precisely, all but 6, one of which is likely hitting the linker
bug Robert mentioned.

>A current limitation of the release is that it *must* be installed on
>drive C. It is not possible to successfully specify an alternative drive
>for the installation.

Note that this is *in addition* to the documented restriction that it
must be installed in the specified directory.  The result of these
combined restrictions is that GNAT must currently be installed in
"c:\usr", which is the default.

Also, you should specify the "Custom" installation option.  "Typical"
does not seem to include GDB, and perhaps other things.

Re: The NT port of GNAT 3.09

[Lance Kibblewhite]

kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) wrote:

>In article <dewar.854358699@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
>>successfully runs all but one or two tests in the ACVC suite.
>
>More precisely, all but 6, one of which is likely hitting the linker
>bug Robert mentioned.
>
>>A current limitation of the release is that it *must* be installed on
>>drive C. It is not possible to successfully specify an alternative drive
>>for the installation.
>
>Note that this is *in addition* to the documented restriction that it
>must be installed in the specified directory.  The result of these
>combined restrictions is that GNAT must currently be installed in
>"c:\usr", which is the default.

Most unfortunate.  While the word "currently" does imply that this
problem will be fixed in a future release, is this likely to be the
"next" release?

-- Lance.

Re: The NT port of GNAT 3.09

[wiljan]

Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote in article
<dewar.854358699@merv>...
> A current limitation of the release is that it *must* be installed on
> drive C. It is not possible to successfully specify an alternative drive
> for the installation.
I am user of 309 for NT and it is certainly possible to install on a
different drive.
The only thing one must do is edit the registery of NT after installation.
Do the installation in the following steps:
    - Install gnat on a specific driver, but in dir /usr
    - run any command of it (simply call gcc). This makes the
      cygnus run time to create the right registery entries.
    - The fix the registery as follows:
This has to do with the way cygnus maps the unix file system to nt.
When you look at the registery in HKEY_CURRENT_USER, in the tree
  Software\Cygnus Support\CYGWIN.DLL setup\b15.0\mounts\
One will find that there are several subs called 00 upto 04 in there.
every sub is a mapping of unix to NT.
In my case the last one 04 contains a mapping of the
unix / to the NT directory c:\
If you change the c in a d everything can reside on drive d
This also allows one to put GNAT on a server.

Wiljan