Re: Companies Only Offering Ada-95 Compilers

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> writes:

> GNAT is certainly very good. But it is a pain in the ass in many ways. It is
> GPL only and even if you use gcc Ada eventually that is going to cause
> problems as GPL moves from GPL2 to 3, and who knows what's next. LGPL
> libraries today, tomorrow everythings GPL, you trusted them, you put all
> your eggs in one basket, you got screwed.

Not sure it's quite as black as that?

FSF GCC has been GPLv3 for a couple of years now, and its libraries
(excepting classpath) are released with the GCC Runtime Library
Exception: for example, C++ headers say

// Under Section 7 of GPL version 3, you are granted additional
// permissions described in the GCC Runtime Library Exception, version
// 3.1, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

FSF seem to have gone to a lot of trouble to make this change[1].

> Back to GNAT, it is often not (easily) available on many POSIX platforms and
> architectures. We have discussed Librecore's abandonment of Solaris
> recently. There is still a lot of SPARC UNIX being used and no place to get 
> a trusted build and no instructions on building yourself. I'm not even sure
> there is an Intel Solaris GNAT available anywhere.

There's a GNAT GPL 2007 at [2]. It would take a while (for someone who
had Solaris x86 set up for it, and the inclination) to go from here to
an up-to-date compiler, but it should be possible.

>                                              gcc Ada would be fine (until
> Stallman drops his GPL bomb on the libraries) but it's only available on
> Linux and Windows. There are other OS in the world. At least if there would
> be instructions somewhere how to build it, it would be used a lot
> more.

It's certainly available on Mac OS X; for instructions, see [3].

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-3.1-faq.html
[2] http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuada/files/GNAT_GPL%20Solaris%2010/
[3] http://forward-in-code.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/building-gcc-again.html