Re: a new language, designed for safety !

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

On 2014-06-13, J-P. Rosen <rosen@adalog.fr> wrote:
> Le 12/06/2014 23:40, Simon Clubley a écrit :
>> Ideally, we also need to try to get people to try Ada while they are
>> still learning or doing hobbyist work and not waiting until the
>> workplace to try to get them to use Ada.
>
> Isn't Gnat GPL perfect for those people?
>

The problem is you need a cross compiler to be able to target bare metal
embedded systems and the only bare metal target available in the GNAT GPL
range is for the AVR.

There's no GNAT GPL cross compiler support for any other platforms/MCUs
including the _very_ popular ARM Cortex-M{0,3,4} MCUs. There are however
freely available C compilers for all these other MCUs (and in addition
those C compilers don't have any restrictions on what you can do with
the binaries you generate with them.)

So the reality is that most people just pick up the C cross compiler for
the MCU in question and use that for their projects.

Simon.

PS: Luke/Brian: do you want to take this opportunity to report on the
state of play and functionality of your work on your ports for ARM,
PIC32MX and MSP430 ?

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