Re: State of the compiler market

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Luke A. Guest" <laguest@archeia.com> wrote in message 
news:1813789782.509760763.093426.laguest-archeia.com@nntp.aioe.org...
> <john@mccabe.org.uk> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have honestly been searching on Google for this, but I can't easily
>> find out who produces a commercial (or free) compiler for Ada 2012, other
>> than AdaCore. Can anyone give me some pointers please?
>
> This is an issue for us open source people, the idea of a new compiler has
> been discussed here before. Randy has stated people shouldn't bother, but 
> I
> disagree as there are reasons to have another one.

To be fair, I've said people shouldn't bother simply because the odds of it 
reaching a usable state are near zero. As several people have noted, the 
parser is the easy part. Figuring out Ada resolution rules, Ada tasking, the 
Ada optimization rules, and many other things will sap anyone of energy long 
before they complete it. (Note that we never had an intent to build a full 
Ada compiler when we started out. We got pushed that way when others got 
interested. And 35+ years have elapsed...)

I think a better approach would be to convince an existing Ada 95 
implementation to go open source and then enhance that to do the things 
desired (Ada 2020 support, etc.). I'd consider it if (a) there were people 
truly interested and (b) it was reasonably obvious how to monitize the 
result (that is, provide enough revenue for living).

                                Randy.