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From: Brian Drummond <brian@shapes.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: How to configure GNAT GPL on x86-64 Linux for ARM ELF development
Date: Sat, 26 May 2018 23:58:17 -0000 (UTC)
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Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:52711
Date: 2018-05-26T23:58:17+00:00
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On Sat, 26 May 2018 05:06:40 +0000, Adam Jensen wrote:

> On Fri, 25 May 2018 10:50:07 +0000, Brian Drummond wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, 25 May 2018 04:45:16 +0000, Adam Jensen wrote:
>> 
>>> Is it common for developers to create their own run-time system for
>>> embedded platforms? My inclination would be to look for hardware based
>>> on 1) RTS availability/quality and 2) toolkit complexity/completeness
>>> (completeness implies useful documentation).
>> 
>> Not common, no. But RTS availability (esp. SPARK RTS) has to start
>> somewhere, and for the MSP430 I didn't really develop one, just adapt
>> from AVR-Ada.
>> 
>> With remarkably little feedback on that project, I admit I've put
>> remarkably little effort into pushing it further. But I want it for my
>> own purposes, the watch is just a pretty by-product.
> 
> Super cool. Are your project's documents posted/hosted anywhere for
> others to view and use?

https://sourceforge.net/projects/msp430ada/

It's somewhat stuck in the past, using Peter Bigot's rather nice MSP430 
backend, because gcc's own MSP430 backend built into newer versions have 
a considerably poorer code generator (last time I looked a couple of 
years ago).

Revisiting it is on my to-do list, hopefully it has improved.

> They have the "Make with Ada" competition:
> <https://www.makewithada.org/>
> 
> And the Adacore University:
> <http://university.adacore.com/>

Both good forms of publicity, though I wonder to what extent they manage 
to bring in new people as opposed to reaching to the converted.

(and I know you've been involved with at least one Ada project for a few 
years :-)

> The Nucleo-144 board was selected as a gentle starter kit to develop
> some confidence and familiarity with the tool-chain and the work-flow.
> It was a total failure in this role. However, I have been keeping notes
> and at some point I might create a tutorial for Ada/Spark development on
> Ubuntu x86_64 targeting the ARM MCU on a Nucleo-144 board. After that, I
> will probably move to a platform with more resources. Eventually, I need
> a processor coupled with an FPGA - the FPGA is where most of the hard
> real- time activity (traction with physics) should take place, IMO.

You'll know all about the bottlenecks between a nice fast FPGA engine and 
any embedded CPU then.

-- Brian