Re: Ada student homework ?

[tmoran@acm.org]

> > Is there a release sequence of
> > GtkAda versions that have been developed and tested with
> > multiple Ada Windows, and
> > instead tie you to ACT's Ada compiler?
>
> That's a bit confused, but I assume you are asking whether
> there are GtkAda versions that work with various Ada 95
> compilers.

  I think your newsreader may be broken.  The sentence said:

"Is there a release sequence of GtkAda versions that have been
developed and tested with multiple Ada compilers?  Or does GtkAda free
you from being tied to MS Windows, and instead tie you to ACT's Ada
compiler?"

  Is there?  Not "anyone can ...", or "... has been at least fiddling
with GtkAda,", but "Is there a release sequence of GtkAda versions
that have been developed and tested with multiple Ada compilers?"

>since CLAW is not open, you have to do all the work of making
>sure it works on multiple Ada compilers. In the case of GtkAda,
>different vendors can distribute that work among themselves.

  CLAW users have full source code and there is certainly no more
impediment to them making it work on some new fifth or sixth Ada
compiler, than to users making GtkAda work on a second or third or
fourth existing or new Ada compiler.  In fact, if a new Ada compiler
does not show any bugs or weirdnesses that need workarounds, porting
CLAW may need no changes at all!  It is true that we have taken it
upon ourselves to do that work for CLAW; I'm happy to hear that ACT
has "been happy to cooperate with them [Rational] on this [porting
GtkAda]."

  To return to the previous topic, I trust we agree that GtkAda's
portability across OSes sometimes, but not always, exceeds its
disadvantages in missing functionality under Windows and its
portability problems across Ada compiler vendors.