Re: Ada on FreeBSD?

[Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com>]

> > I have found a couple of relevant packages, the ports collection even
> > includes GNAT GPL 2010, but certainly the coverage is much less
> > impressive than that of Debian.

I didn't see the original post so I am responding to this one.

Last time I looked, Ada was not buildable on the AMD64 (x86_64) port of
FreeBSD. If you want to use Ada under FreeBSD you will have to know quite a
lot about building gcc under FreeBSD or you will have to run the x86 (32
bit) version of FreeBSD where the port does build properly. And you should
not assume just because a port is listed in the tree that it will build, or
build on your architecture, until you actually build the port and test
it. More than once I have tried to build a port on FreeBSD AMD64 only to
have it die halfway through the build. Contacting the maintainer I got
something like "oh yeah I know it doesn't work on AMD64". Caveat emptor.

It's all about whether someone who uses the architecture you want works
with the port you want. There is certainly nobody as interested in Ada on
various BSD OS or Solaris OS or Linux distros who is as committed as
Ludovic, but that doesn't mean you can't use Ada anywhere but Debian. But
you are likely to have the best results on the most common (x86, 32bit)
ports of various BSD just because they have the most people using them at
the moment. The BSD guys are generally not hardware freaks and are happy to
continue running old junkers years after everybody else has thrown them in
the trash bin.