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=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.glorb.com!peer02.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!post02.iad.highwinds-media.com!fx21.iad.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Shark8 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.0a1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Augusta: An open source Ada 2012 compiler (someday?) References: <1f0a85a6-ea4d-4d30-8537-0ce9063f992a@googlegroups.com> In-Reply-To: <1f0a85a6-ea4d-4d30-8537-0ce9063f992a@googlegroups.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-ID: X-Complaints-To: abuse@teranews.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 18:01:47 UTC Organization: TeraNews.com Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 12:03:44 -0700 X-Received-Bytes: 3883 X-Received-Body-CRC: 309331775 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:18880 Date: 2014-03-20T12:03:44-07:00 List-Id: On 20-Mar-14 03:23, Lucretia wrote: > On Wednesday, 19 March 2014 13:24:36 UTC, Peter Chapin wrote: >> In another thread Shark8 posted a proposal to build an IDE+compiler for >> Ada 2012. In his post he notes that having a second open source compiler >> offering (besides GNAT) for Ada would be good for the Ada community. > > It is, but the way he is considering it seems to hark back to the olden days of Ada compilers. True; I can see the merits in Ada 83's Library, and how that could be extended/expanded. Just because something is older than another doesn't mean it's worse: as an example consider LISP and PHP, LISP is far older (`58) than PHP (`95), and LISP is far better for building any real system in... but PHP markets itself as "easy to use" (and that's both [trivially] true, and completely false [when you consider all the things you have to manually do to ensure a robust/correct application]). >> I agree. >> >> GNAT is a fine product but it would enrich the eco-system if there were >> alternatives. Accordingly I started a pet project for myself to build an >> Ada 2012 compiler from the ground up which I'm calling "Augusta." The >> project is here: >> >> https://github.com/pchapin/augusta > > A couple of months ago I was searching the net for other Ada compilers, > subsets mainly. Only ones I found were either Ada 83 (original ones) or > the Ada-ish (not really a subset) from the Crafting a compiler in C book. > I was searching as I was planning to build a subset of Ada 2012 (in > Ada 2012 using GNAT). I actually started the code today before I heard > about these two threads. I look forward to seeing it; I'm sure there are others here, too. >> I am not as naive as I probably sound. I fully understand that such a >> project is massive and not likely to actually ever be completed. > > As long as you don't expect all the annexes, I don't see why not. I don't expect them, I demand them! (Unfortunately my demands will not be met.) ;) >> In the meantime I've been using Augusta as a source of class examples >> and student exercises in a compiler course I'm teaching at Vermont >> Technical College. The work there has been in a sub-project called > > Do you have a website with the course materials at all? Always worth a > look. Why don't you set up your compiler as a means for students to add > to, i.e. add floating point support, add real-time annex, etc. That > would get your compiler off the ground faster and might even take less > than 6 years to complete. IOW, co-opt them into helping your own goals along; I approve. (It also fits with Randy's "Eat your own dogfood.") >> Allegra which is intended to be a compiler for a series of highly > > You might want to change the name as there is a project with that > name already, see #Ada on Freenode. Sometimes naming is the hard part... what's worse, though, is when the name is "the same, but different". (e.g. “NEXTSTEP”, “NextStep”, “NeXTstep”, “NeXTStep”, and “NeXTSTEP”.)