Re: GNAT stuck, any idea on how to diagnose it?

[Brad Moore <brad.moore@shaw.ca>]

On 2014-09-14 8:49 AM, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Sep 2014 09:21:18 +0000 (UTC), Natasha Kerensikova wrote:
>
>> Would you know what is this `gnat1`?
>> What part of the build process is it?
>> What is the command above supposed to perform?
>> Is it known to occasionally take a lot of time?
>
> Yes. It may take relatively much time on its own, but from my experience, I
> can tell that GNAT consumes extremely and unreasonably much memory.
>
> At some point it stops compiling under 32-bit systems because there is not
> enough virtual memory.
>
> You could check if your problem is caused by exhaustion of the physical
> memory and turning to the swap. If swap gets involved it will never end.
>

I have on very rare occasion run into a case where the compiler appears 
to be stuck in an endless loop when encountering some illegal code that 
it couldn't handle. (More typically, this would involve a compiler crash 
where at least you get some diagnostic message offering a clue to the 
problem). In my case, I think it had something to do with a name 
resolution problem I think. I found the source of the problem by 
commenting out sections of new code until the
problem went away, then adding back smaller sections until the program 
reappears, until I zeroed in on the problematic code. Once I realized my
mistake, I changed the code to use legal constructs, and the code 
compiled right away.

Brad