Re: Ada compiler using a M2 compiler as back-end

[Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP>]

On 2012-02-09, Rugxulo <rugxulo@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> On Feb 9, 3:57�am, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Once Ada95 and C++98 were standardized (ISO), there was less
>> need to use Modula-3 as they had the same basic features (objects,
>> generics, exceptions). Even Oberon-2 (1992) has objects, dynamic
>> arrays, garbage collection. But Oberon was never standardized, and
>> even ISO Modula-2 (1996) was quite big (vs. PIM3)
>
> Oops, forgot to mention the massive popularity of Delphi/FreePascal,
> Java, C#, and Objective C. Yeah, I guess you already noticed that (hi
> Gautier!). In other words, it's a very fractured world. Oh well,
> variety is the spice of life!

One of the annoyances about the alternate Wirth type languages is
that they have some nice features which make writing safe code easier,
but they, unlike Ada, don't appear to be targetted for hard real time
bare metal environments.

Ada runs just fine on the Atmel AVR and, when used under RTEMS, can be
made to run on a ARM board if you are willing to write a BSP.

GNU Modula-2 looks like (maybe) a possible candidate if you only want a
basic set of language capabilities, but I find it's upper case keywords
to be really ugly.

Oberon has some talk about running on a NXP MCU, but I could not find
any mention of it's real time characteristics (it uses garbage collection),
it's footprint or porting effort involved or which of it's several
variants would be best for exploring further. I did find mention of a
port to the AVR, but that appears to have been a one-off effort.

Has anyone used any of the other Wirth type languages in a bare metal
environment and how did they compare to Ada ?

Thanks,

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world