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From: Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: DragonEgg has been revived
Date: Tue, 22 May 2018 12:29:09 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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Date: 2018-05-22T12:29:09+00:00
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On 2018-05-21, Dan'l Miller <optikos@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Simon, how fervently do you seek an LLVM-backended GNAT?  Over on other
> threads in recent days, I have been commenting on a proposed alternative to
> DragonEgg.

What I would like to see is an Ada compiler that can generate code
for a wide range of targets without any GPL restrictions on the
generated code.

I'm not really bothered how that happens but LLVM seems like an
interesting option.

The real question however is will this Ada compiler still work with
the versions of the toolchains available 2-5 years from now or will
it fall into disuse just like DragonEgg did ?

There's a confidence problem here. I can write C and C++ code in 2018
for some random embedded target knowing there's a very very good chance
I will still be able to compile that code on the freely available
toolchains which will exist 5 years from now.

I don't currently have that confidence with the Ada compilers which are
available in 2018.

As I have said before, the language is _really_ good, but the compiler
situation is lousy.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world