From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,3a4656a5edc0dab4 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public Path: controlnews3.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!nnx.oleane.net!oleane!freenix!enst.fr!melchior!cuivre.fr.eu.org!melchior.frmug.org!not-for-mail From: "Alexander E. Kopilovich" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Symbian OS (was: Re: Ada used in General Aviation (GA) applications?) Date: Fri, 14 May 2004 00:37:00 +0400 (MSD) Organization: Cuivre, Argent, Or Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lovelace.ada-france.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: melchior.cuivre.fr.eu.org 1084480770 5376 212.85.156.195 (13 May 2004 20:39:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@melchior.cuivre.fr.eu.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 20:39:30 +0000 (UTC) To: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org Return-Path: In-Reply-To: ; from Martin Dowie at Thu, 13 May 2004 14:58:03 +0000 (UTC) X-Mailer: Mail/@ [v2.44 MSDOS] X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20030616-p7 (Debian) at ada-france.org X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.4 Precedence: list List-Id: "Gateway to the comp.lang.ada Usenet newsgroup" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Xref: controlnews3.google.com comp.lang.ada:559 Date: 2004-05-14T00:37:00+04:00 Martin Dowie wrote: >A "Dummies Guide to porting GNAT" covering both processor >and OS would be a huge help. I'd love to have Ada available for >SymbianOS (or it's predecessor EPOC32). Being more or less familiar with Symbian OS (mostly SonyEricsson's flavour - Symbian 7.0, much less Nokia's Series 60 flavour - Symbian 6.1) I think that any guide of porting GNAT will not bring you near to that aim. Actually, current Symbian C++ development toolset consist of C++ compiler (usually Metrowerks CodeWarrior is used for Symbian 7.0 and MSVC 6.0 for Symbian 6.1, although there are SDKs for other compilers, for example, Borland's C++ Builder), resource compiler, linker (with addition for resources) - all that produces an executable for emulator only - and emulator itself. Production version of the program (which will be loaded into smartphone) has to be compiled and built with another toolset, which is GCC-based. So, in principle one may try to port GNAT for Symbian, but there will be severe haedaches with GCC versions, and you'll not be able to use the emulator for development. Then, even if you adapt GNAT for Windows for use with the emulator, you still be quite restricted, because the emulator has problems with support of tasking - in Symbian terminology it supports "threads", but not "processes". Well, C++ development on emulator has the same limitation, so I just warn you that you should not expect too much from Ada tasking on emulator (if you aren't going to develop better emulator). But all that is less than half of work, I think - because there are mountains of APIs for Symbian (and many of them differ significantly between Symbian's flavours). And it will be quite serious work to provide Ada bindinds even for most needed APIs. (As you can expect, those APIs/classes/etc. are only partially documented, and the source code is not available after EPOC32 R5). Actually I thought that RR Software's Janus/Ada might be more proper thing (than GNAT) for targetting at Symbian, and several times I tempted to tell Randy about this opportunity... but there is a lot of work, and perhaps small chances that that work will be compensated by sales. If there were interest and some funding from one of smartphone vendors that use or plan to use Symbian (Nokia, SonyEricsson, Siemens, Samsung, etc. ... I'm not sure about Motorola) - it will be another matter, but they still are trying to push Java (without much success, though - as far as I can see). Alexander Kopilovich aek@vib.usr.pu.ru Saint-Petersburg Russia