Re: Ada "library only" compiler ?

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Ludovic Brenta" <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote in message 
news:87mx2ucags.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org...
> Peter C. Chapin writes on comp.lang.ada:
...
> So the conclusion is: while it is theoretically possible to write an Ada
> run-time library that interfaces directly with the kernel, it is
> practically undesirable.  The huge effort required would bring almost no
> benefit and should be spent elsewhere.

You're talking specifically about Linux, and you should make this fact 
clear.

Janus/Ada 83 for SCO Unix directly accessed the kernel traps. This was made 
necessary by the fact that we hadn't invented any way to do C interfacing, 
and by that point were waiting to see how Ada 9x would handle that before 
doing anything. (This was about 1991, I think.) This compiler could only do 
Ada, and still could do pretty much any Unix operations that were needed.

And of course, the situation on Windows is very different. The basic OS API 
(Win32) is defined via a set of DLL interfaces that are consistent across 
all modern versions of Windows specifically so binary compatibility is 
possible. No C is really required there, either.

                                                Randy.