Re: GDB Woes Continued...

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Roger said

<<1) Most people do not have access to the beta versions of commercial
  OSes.  They have the "broken version you can buy in stores".  And those
  computers have -lots- of other programs installed.>>

No, that's quite wrong, most people have the OSR2 version of Win95, because
that's what comes preinstalled. Remember that Microsoft's proposal to allow
the old (store available) version to be installed by OEM's as a solution to
getting rid of explorer was widely regarded as a completely unreasonable
response to the government suit.

So unless you are in the very small minority (at this stage) who is running
the original version of WIn95, you are probably already running OSR2.

<<Do you have any idea on what configurations of Windows platforms your
  testers are testing?  Are they all using some pre-release version, or a
  "clean" machine used only for Ada development?>>

No one is using pre-releases of any kind, we are using the current version
of Win95, as distributed by Microsoft preinstalled on OEM machines. Yes, it
is a pity you can't buy this in a store, but complain to MS about this, not
to us!

<<2) If you care about the unsupported folks out here (which it seems you
  do, or you would not be responding) have relative novices (with the
  platform and the download procedure) go through the installation process
  and the documentation available on the server.  Many people are going to
  simply download the .EXE files and install.  That is what they are used to
  for commercial products, shareware and freeware.  Do not suggest that they
  build the product from source code.  They have better things to do with
  their time (and disk space).>>

No one is for a moment suggesting to anyone that they build the NT version
from sources. You never saw me or anyone else suggest this. In fact this
build is quite tricky, and we advise trying it only if you know what you
are doing!

<<3) Do not assume that the users of your unsupported version are not
  important to your economic success.  Some are evaluating the language, the
  product, or the company.  If they find a robust product, at least as good
  as what they are used to, the language will get more converts, and you
  will get more supported customers.  Lots of winners!>>

Actually we do NOT encourage people to use the public version for evaluation.
If you want to evaluate GNAT, you should contact our sales department 
regarding evaluation licenses. For any proprietary product, this is the
procedure you would normally follow anyway, and it is still the best 
approach for GNAT. 

We make the public version available for students and other casual users,
and it is useful in that mode for spreading the use of the language, but
the public version of GNAT most definitely is NOT intended for serious
evaluation purposes. For one thing, one of the most important aspects of
the use of the GNAT technology is the support that we can provide, and
if you are doing a serious evaluation of GNAT, you should also evaluate
that support!

Finally, as I noted before, we do NOT encourage the use of Win95 for
serious software development. We attempt to make sure that the NT version
works on Win95, since for student use particularly this is valuable, but
it is clear that WIn95 is not suitable for software development where any



Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies