Re: GNAT on Mac OS X

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

Achim <joachim.schroeer@web.de> writes:

> Now I installed (or just unpacked) GNAT GPL 2010.
> As stated in the readme, I gave ./doinstall and got the error message:
>
> "The make command could not be found on your PATH. ..."
>
> gps runs and gnatmake starts to work, but I think the "installation"
> is not as required.
>
> So I think there are a lot prerequisites left out in the explanation
> that I need as a relative Mac newbe. I have the following questions:
>
> 1) What do I have to install (e.g. XCode Version?) for GNAT (including
> gnu/make) to become fully functional? I remember former posts stating
> that some GNAT versions are not compatible with some XCode versions or
> that GNAT has to be installed in certain folders to avoid
> inconsistencies.

Yes, it's Xcode. I'm running 3.2.6 (there was a recent update) under
10.6.7.

Because I run several versions of GNAT I install it in version-specific
places, eg /opt/gnat-gpl-2010 and make sure that (eg)
/opt/gnat-gpl-2010/bin is first on my PATH.

A little experiment here seems to indicate that the PATH you set up in
~/.bash_profile_common is the one that GPS uses to find GNAT (it's not
so easy with Emacs, my preferred development environment; need to set up
the right path in ~/.emacs).

> 2) Next, I need the posix binding (florist). As there is none on the
> libre site, can I just build the Linux version from sources?

I haven't used this, so perhaps someone else can help. I do expect that
you can build from source (the Libre sources aren't deliberately
OS-specific, it's just that if AdaCore haven't released a binary for a
particular OS they don't make the sources available under that OS).

> less important:
>
> 3) I want to make gps a normal executable and connect it with all
> *.gpr, *.ads, *.adb files. When clicking on one of these files in the
> finder, gps should come up.

I suspect this is trickier since GPS is an X11 application. I think it
has to be possible (the GIMP does it, for example).

> I've some experience using GNAT on different Linuxes and would be glad
> to hear, that you can work similarly on Mac OS.

It works fine for me, though I've forgotten many of the hurdles I've had
to cross! There are other Mac users around here; also, the GNAT-OSX
mailing list at https://hermes.gwu.edu/archives/gnat-osx.html .