Re: Why so hard to come up with a simple embedded Ada system?

[anon@att.net]

In <37da1783-b355-4d43-a9a8-7f0d4ba4da9c@t13g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, usenet@scriptoriumdesigns.com writes:
>I'll just come out and say it - for a language that was designed for
>as much for embedded applications as for anything, it seems to be
>maddeningly difficult to actually get Ada on a modest embedded
>platform.  By modest I mean low-end 32 bits, no MMU.  ARM7 or Cortex
>Mx would be my first choice.  I can be up and running on such a
>platform with C and a tasking library in a day (Rowley Crossworks,
>nice package).  Why can't I do the same with Ada?  Or rather, to avoid
>making this about me, why can't an embedded programmer - student,
>hobbyist or professional - who's heard about Ada and wants to give it
>a spin, including hard-realtime concurrency, just do it?
>
>If Ada fans (I include myself) want to see Ada get more exposure, this
>seems like not only a desirable step but a necessary one.  I can run C
>on a thousand such boards, and I can't (AFAIK) run Ada on one.
>
>Maybe this is all available, and I just haven't found out where.  Then
>that's a problem too, but I'll be happy to hear about it.
>
>All comments welcome.
First, Ada was designed to be an application language, not only to be 
used for applications but Ada allows all programming including embedded.

As for concurrency and real-time are built-in features of the Ada 
language from 83 to the current version.

In a Ada shop you can write your code on a Host system, test and debug 
then recompile to the embedded target system. Of course, to do this the 
Host system must emulate the devices on targets system and the compiler 
must be able to generate the object module for that target system. But 
most of these Ada compiles that have is ability are out of the price 
range of students. But there are a few projects like for ARMs that uses 
GPL GNAT that are around, if you do a little research you should be able 
to find one or two.