Re: Why are Ada compilers difficult to write ?

[Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP>]

On 2018-06-23, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Jun 2018 18:03:28 -0700 (PDT), "Dan'l Miller"
><optikos@verizon.net> declaimed the following:
>
>>
>>I can understand phasing Alpha and VAX and National Semiconductor 32032 ISAs out of modern GCC because each is no longer manufactured, but I think that every compiler should support every processor on the planet that is manufactured ?today?.
>
> 	Yet there are a lot of installations running OpenVMS (Alpha and/or VAX
> variants) via virtual machines, because it is easier to certify that the VM
> emulation is producing identical binaries as the original hardware, than it
> is to certify the software that would be built by porting from the VMS
> build-tools to native (cross-) development {the case I have experience with
> is an emulated VAX/VMS running a cross-compiler for 68040}.
>

Yes, I was going to say that Alpha systems are still in active use
(VSI now have support contracts for Alpha VMS users) and recent
security research work revealed that there still appear to be a
number of VAX users as well.

Simon.

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