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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.unit0.net!peer02.am4!peer.am4.highwinds-media.com!peer03.iad!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!buffer1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2017 16:13:33 -0600 From: Dennis Lee Bieber Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: some trivial questions? Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2017 17:13:34 -0500 Organization: IISS Elusive Unicorn Message-ID: References: <6a5368c5-f015-4dcb-9291-e77b40fa1bf1@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: ForteAgent/8.00.32.1272 X-No-Archive: YES MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 108.68.178.48 X-Trace: sv3-XzwmoG/1ts4q1Opw1vea1QkH/co03mBteJmrhj8KYSJtrR05+dIVdv2lP8j+nrCKNWMPm1WHwke6js3!VZYCaTDXpdfGyr9IjKfh+42xK8Wi7qi95YBrP8M7ZjYJZBqrOpQT7OEmMPR7d1sykT8rYWdZFcDC!zgD5I/SxG6m1iNzUbPMzvqqlQrQ= X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 3482 X-Received-Body-CRC: 983002038 X-Received-Bytes: 3693 Xref: feeder.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:49124 Date: 2017-11-23T17:13:34-05:00 List-Id: On Thu, 23 Nov 2017 11:57:33 -0800 (PST), Blady declaimed the following: >In 2017, why aren't they all at Ada 2012 standard? >One clue may be that customers which are mainly conservative (Spatial, Aeronautics, Defense... domains) are not so demanding. Remember "The demand makes the offer". And one reason for that lack of demand is that those domains tend to require validated compilers -- and a change in compiler may also lead to having to completely certify any software products produced by said compiler. A mere bug fix in the product may be able to reuse prior certification artifacts and only require recertification of the procedure that was modified. Certification can take months, if not years, for products that are expected to be in use for decades. I believe when my former employer moved from a genuine VAX/VMS for development to OpenVMS running in a VAX emulation on a Windows server, they had to validate the compiler again -- even though it was the /same binary/ build system (XD Ada 83 as I recall). They may have managed to speed this validation by running differences on resulting binary files to show that the compiler produced identical running code [barring embedded date information]. >Then the evolution process is made of small compatible changes to be attractive to customers and then compiler providers. >But in majority they don't upgrade! >Thus who cares about being compatible for new standard? Heck -- in above environment, not even Ada's tasking model was permitted, relying instead upon calling task creation via a minimal RTOS (because the RTOS behavior was certified, but Ada tasking was considered an unknown); nor anything that required dynamic memory allocation past the "initialization" functions, once the application transitioned to "running" all memory allocation is blocked. -- Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN wlfraed@ix.netcom.com HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/