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,f9d071c8f9592f29 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Floating point emulation Date: 1997/03/15 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 225803189 References: <3326F958.35AC@aisvt.bfg.com> <5g9a75$6nn@top.mitre.org> Organization: New York University Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-03-15T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Michael asks <> It is just something we (a) don't support and (b) none of our customers have needed. Last I knew, ivory tower was not the usual phrase that people use for the principle that you do what your customers are willing to pay for! As I said in an earlier post, it is probably not that difficult a problem to solve (get DOS and GNAT working with floating-point emulation), we have invested zero effort in trying to solve this problem, because there is zero demand. Well that's not quite fair, there are a couple of users with educational licenses who would like it (notably Mike Feldman), but that's not enough for us to justify working on it. One of the changes that happened in the GNAT project when it moved from being directly supported by the DoD to being commercially supported is that the choices on such matters have to get far harder nosed. We have little choice but to work on things that people will pay for. It would be nice if there were some general free support for educational users, or if we could afford to provide this kind of free support. There isn't, and we can't (at least not yet). The one thing that we DO contribute on our own nickel is the continued work to make public versions of GNAT in binary form for various targets. Often people think that the GPL somehow mysteriously requires this kind of effort -- it definitely does not! But as part of our contribution to helping to spread Ada 95 use, particularly in universities, we think this is a worthwhile effort, and will continue to spend our time doing it. A lot of folks, particularly in universities, would like free support, and that is understandable (sometimes people rant and rave, complete with obscenities, *demanding* that we provide free support, and that is not understandable :-) As i say, it would be nice if we could afford to provide such support free, or if someone could fund it, but right now that's not the way things are, and we are super busy. Especially this week, preparing for four more 100% validatoins of GNAT for four new targets that are just about to begin (the validators arrive from Germany on Monday :-) Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies