Re: GNAT versions ( was :Ada compiler for PC?)

[David Kastrup <dak@mailhost.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>]

Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com> writes:

> A similar situation arises with Cygnus today, they invest
> substantial resources to help with the maintenance of the
> Cygnus tree, and those resources are enormously helpful to
> the gcc community at large, not just to Cygnus.
> 
> That leads some people to harbour suspicions
> that Cygnus really secretly controls the process and
> somehow twists it to serve their own ends, but really this
> is quite absurd, and does not correspond at all to the
> reality of the situation.

It *does* correspond to the reality of the situation as Cygnus invests
considerable manpower in the process.  In a way, they are preparing
well-trodden paths that are convenient for their purposes by investing
appropriate resources.  If they are not interested in some direction
of work, they'll leave it to other parties.

While I find no wrong with that, it would be foolish to deny that the
willingness to invest a large amount of work in GCC *does* have a
large influence on what direction the compiler development is taking.

If a few larger vendors realized this somewhat more (Intel seems to
have waken up to it somewhat recently), this could only help GCC
development.  CPU manufacturers actually should have an even larger
interest as Cygnus in getting actively involved in GCC.  It lends
large value improvements to their products with minimal costs.


-- 
David Kastrup                                     Phone: +49-234-700-5570
Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de       Fax: +49-234-709-4209
Institut f�r Neuroinformatik, Universit�tsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany