GNAT for microcontrollers?

GNAT for microcontrollers?

[David Wheeler]

Has anyone used (or considered using) GNAT to develop software
for 8-bit or 16-bit microcontrollers?  If I were to attempt to
use GNAT for microcontrollers, any recommendations on chips, usage
process, or lessons learned?

For those who don't know what I'm talking about:
Microcontrollers are "computers-on-a-chip"
with some ROM (e.g. 1K-4K), some RAM (e.g. 256 bytes), and many other
capabilities (e.g. serial port, LED drivers) built into a single chip.
There's a FAQ on microcontrollers at:
  http://www.hitex.com/automation/FAQ/primer/
and a useful list of web resources at:
 http://www.espmag.com/net.htm

Thanks.


--- David A. Wheeler
    dwheeler@ida.org

Re: GNAT for microcontrollers?

[Robert Dewar]

iDavid Wheeler asks

<<Has anyone used (or considered using) GNAT to develop software
for 8-bit or 16-bit microcontrollers?  If I were to attempt to
use GNAT for microcontrollers, any recommendations on chips, usage
process, or lessons learned?>>

I don't know of anyone actually doing this yet, but lots of people have
considered it, or at least talked about it (look up the long thread
a while ago on CLA).

A good recommendation is to start with a chip for which a good gcc port
is already available. A number of micro-controller chips routinely use
gcc for their C capability, and this makes for a good start in a GNAT
port. A GNAT port that does not need tasking capability is not a huge
job to build on top of a GCC port if you know what you are doing.