Re: Interfacing Ada With Full Runtime Directly to Electronic Chips

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl writes:

> Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Both of the above use OS device support via file read/write/ioctl. If
>> you want to go bare(ish) metal, there is the AdaCore Ada_Drivers_Library
>> at [4]. This uses cross-compilation for ARM Cortex MCUs, compilers from
>> AdaCore (or [5], [6] for Mac), with runtimes for boards mostly from
>> STMicroelectronics (e.g. [7]).
>> 
>> The AdaCore runtimes support Ravenscar tasking[8] and come in two
>> flavours, small footprint (-sfp-) and full (-full-). The -full- version
>> supports exception handling and finalization and includes
>> Ada.Numerics. Neither support containers (easy enough to copy into the
>> -full- version, I expect).
>> 
>> The Ada_Drivers_Library uses a BSD license. The AdaCore runtimes use a
>> full-GPL license. If this matters to you I have runtimes for Arduino Due
>> and STM32F4[9] which are based on FreeRTOS and have the GCC Runtime
>> Library Exception, allowing release of code on proprietary terms.
>
> IIUC STM runtimes are incompatible with GPL.  So combining them
> with GPL runtime means that result can not be distributed at
> all.

Do you have a reference for this? the STM source licence that I see in
the STM32Cube firmware releases imposes very few restrictions on the
actual use of the software, only requiring inclusion of the STM
copyright notice. There's nothing like the restriction quoted in [1].

But in any case the RTS I'm talking about doesn't use any STM code, just
FreeRTOS. Which uses a GPLv2 licence, which doesn't include the usual
"or later version" test. Which may be a problem.

[1] https://github.com/d-ronin/dRonin/issues/928