Ada -> Java by Java disassemlers?

Ada -> Java by Java disassemlers?

[Joachim Schröer]

You mention an Ada95 -> Java compiler. Has anyone tried to disassamble 
.class files compiled by an Ada95 to bytecode compiler like JGnat.
There are some disassemblers that convert .class files to .java files.

	J. Schr�er


> If ACT-Europe is not willing to support JGNAT anymore, they would possibly be 
> willing to put JGNAT into Open Source. Would that make sense or doesn't it 
> matter due to lack of commercial support? I think it's better to support 
> JGNAT by the public than to let JGNAT disappear into oblivion. Another choice 
> would be to write a Ada 95 -> Java compiler (and/or Ada95 -> C#) but that 
> would be pretty much work ;-)
> 
> I am sorry about that most programmers prefer light-weight languages like 
> Java and C# instead of Ada 95. Of course, they seem to be more comfortable 
> and easier to learn. But my experience with Ada is far better that with all 
> my previous languages Perl, PHP, Java, C++ etc. The larger the projects the 
> better the life with Ada. Now the IMHO very best language seems to pass away 
> - slowly but surely. It's a shame! But there is some hope: In last weeks I 
> discovered some new websites regarding Ada 95 (for example, 
> http://www.ada-deutschland.de in German).
> 
> By the way: Does anyone know about any Ada support for the Microsoft .NET 
> platform?
> 
> Ingo
> 

Re: Ada -> Java by Java disassemlers?

[Dr. Michael Paus]

Joachim Schr�er wrote:
> 
> You mention an Ada95 -> Java compiler. Has anyone tried to disassamble
> .class files compiled by an Ada95 to bytecode compiler like JGnat.
> There are some disassemblers that convert .class files to .java files.

Yes, I did but I failed. I took a class file produced by AdaMagic and tried
to decompile it. It worked for a trivial hello world example but after I
added a little bit more code the decompiler failed. It seems that the
Ada compiler produced some legal bytecode which the decompiler could not
translate into some legal piece of Java. I finally gave up on this issue.

Just for curiosity. For what kind of project do you need an Ada to Java
compiler?

Michael

Re: Ada -> Java by Java disassemlers?

[Ingo Marks]

Dr. Michael Paus <paus@jb-paus.com> wrote:

> Just for curiosity. For what kind of project do you need an Ada to Java
> compiler?

I would like to code with Ada in the next generation platforms (Java/J2EE 
and/or .NET). I don't like the supported languages (Java, C#) pretty much. 

Unfortunately, JGNAT ist no longer supported. So we don't have any up-to-date 
Ada -> Java-Bytecode-Compilers in the future. But if we had an Ada -> Java 
source compiler, which takes in Ada program and compiles it into an 
equivalent Java program (source code as "very high level assembler code" ;-) 
then we would be independent of JDK versions. We just would compile the 
created intermediate Java source code with the most up-to-date Java compiler 
and we had it. The same way it would be possible to get Ada run on .NET. Java 
and C# have many features common to Ada, so it should not be too difficult to 
write an Ada -> Java or Ada -> C# compiler. Really, it would be much easier 
to write such a new source to source compiler than to deep into the Java or 
MSIL bytcode sea. I think at least a subset of Ada 95 (exceptions etc.) could 
be ported. If the whole Ada 95 standard (tasks etc.) could be ported to Java 
or C#, is another question. Anyway, for my most applications, I use only a 
subset of Ada. I don't think anyone would demand real time applications for 
.NET.

Somewhere I read about an "Ada 2005" standard. Are there any plans to extend 
Ada?

Ingo

Re: Ada -> Java by Java disassemlers?

[Joachim Schröer]

Dr. Michael Paus wrote:

> Joachim Schr�er wrote:
> 
>>You mention an Ada95 -> Java compiler. Has anyone tried to disassamble
>>.class files compiled by an Ada95 to bytecode compiler like JGnat.
>>There are some disassemblers that convert .class files to .java files.
>>
> 
> Yes, I did but I failed. I took a class file produced by AdaMagic and tried
> to decompile it. It worked for a trivial hello world example but after I
> added a little bit more code the decompiler failed. It seems that the
> Ada compiler produced some legal bytecode which the decompiler could not
> translate into some legal piece of Java. I finally gave up on this issue.
> 
> Just for curiosity. For what kind of project do you need an Ada to Java
> compiler?
> 
> Michael
> 


First, as other people in this newsgroup I prefer Ada over Java.
The other reason: Our current project demands Java (J2EE) and we have a 
few hundred thousend loc of (not very nice) Ada83. I would prefer a 
transition to Ada95 and a parallel improvement of the code but we need 
an Ada95 to bytecode compiler.
(I did not ask for an Ada to Java source compiler, but this would be a 
nice thing).

	J. Schr�er