Advice needed! Ada compilers for school project.

Advice needed! Ada compilers for school project.

[Ben]

I am taking a college Programming Languages course. Our semester
project is to write a language manual on the language given to us.
Mine is Ada.

We will be required to assign a lab to the class in the language
assigned to us. So I will be assigning a lab in Ada. My professor has
asked each of us to specify a compiler that we would like to have
installed.

So, I shall ask those with experience: what Ada compiler would be best
suited for students with no experience in Ada, easy to use or pick up,
easy to write instructions for.

If there are multiple compilers that fit the bill then please list all
of them.

Thank you very much.

Regards,
Ben

Re: Advice needed! Ada compilers for school project.

[Jerry Petrey]

Ben wrote:
> 
> I am taking a college Programming Languages course. Our semester
> project is to write a language manual on the language given to us.
> Mine is Ada.
> 
> We will be required to assign a lab to the class in the language
> assigned to us. So I will be assigning a lab in Ada. My professor has
> asked each of us to specify a compiler that we would like to have
> installed.
> 
> So, I shall ask those with experience: what Ada compiler would be best
> suited for students with no experience in Ada, easy to use or pick up,
> easy to write instructions for.
> 
> If there are multiple compilers that fit the bill then please list all
> of them.
> 
> Thank you very much.
> 
> Regards,
> Ben

GNAT would be your best.  You can get from:

ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/gnat/

Also if you are using Windows, get the latest GUI (AdaGIDE) from:

http://www.usafa.af.mil/dfcs/bios/mcc_html/adagide.html

Jerry
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-- Jerry Petrey                                                
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Re: Advice needed! Ada compilers for school project.

[Wes Groleau]

Ben wrote:
> So, I shall ask those with experience: what Ada compiler would be best
> suited for students with no experience in Ada, easy to use or pick up,
> easy to write instructions for.

Sounds like a shill for ACT!  :-)

Seriously, when it comes to helpful diagnostic messages for beginners,
GNAT is the best! And if you're REALLY ambitious, you can recompile it
yourself and have the messages reference paragraphs in your home-brewed
language guide!

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: Advice needed! Ada compilers for school project.

[Alfred Hilscher]

There are : GNAT (compiler) with Gide (IDE)
        Aonix special edition (complete)

For more detailed information goto www.adapower.com

Ben wrote:
> 
> I am taking a college Programming Languages course. Our semester
> project is to write a language manual on the language given to us.
> Mine is Ada.
> 
> We will be required to assign a lab to the class in the language
> assigned to us. So I will be assigning a lab in Ada. My professor has
> asked each of us to specify a compiler that we would like to have
> installed.
> 
> So, I shall ask those with experience: what Ada compiler would be best
> suited for students with no experience in Ada, easy to use or pick up,
> easy to write instructions for.
> 
> If there are multiple compilers that fit the bill then please list all
> of them.
> 
> Thank you very much.
> 
> Regards,
> Ben

Re: Advice needed! Ada compilers for school project.

[Preben Randhol]

On 24 Oct 2001 07:58:23 -0700, Ben wrote:
> I am taking a college Programming Languages course. Our semester
> project is to write a language manual on the language given to us.
> Mine is Ada.
> 
> We will be required to assign a lab to the class in the language
> assigned to us. So I will be assigning a lab in Ada. My professor has
> asked each of us to specify a compiler that we would like to have
> installed.
> 
> So, I shall ask those with experience: what Ada compiler would be best
> suited for students with no experience in Ada, easy to use or pick up,
> easy to write instructions for.

GNAT!

1. It is freely available (no cost), unless you want the supported
   version, but you don't need that.

2. It is widely used

3. Not limited to Windows also available on Linux and other OSes.

4. It is easy to install both on Windows and Linux

5. It can be used by the students on their machines without any license
   problems and also later if you can get some of your students interested
   in doing Ada stuff on their spare time.

6. It has extra functionality which makes life easier. E.g regex
   package, directory and file handling etc... which also are portable. I
   mean it will work if compiled with Gnat on both Windows and Linux.

Some Links:

 Main Ada site           :  http://www.adapower.com/

 ISO Reference Manual    :  http://www.adapower.com/rm95/
 ISO Rational Manual     :  http://www.adapower.com/rationale/
 Quality and Style Guide :  http://www.adaic.com/docs/95style/html/cover.html

 Online Ada 95 book      :  http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je/adacraft/
 Online Ada 95 book II   :  http://burks.bton.ac.uk/burks/language/ada/ada95.pdf
 Ada 95 book reviews     :  http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada95books.html

 GNU Ada Compiler(GNAT)  :  http://www.gnat.com/
 GNAT for Linux, Dos,
 NetBSD, OS/2m SCO       :  http://www.gnuada.org/
 GNAT for Windows        :  http://home.trouwweb.nl/Jerry/

 GTKAda ToolKit (GTK+)   :  http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/
 GNADE Project           :  http://gnade.sourceforge.net/

 BURKS                   :  http://burks.bton.ac.uk/burks/
 
Preben Randhol

Re: Advice needed! Ada compilers for school project.

[tmoran]

> what Ada compiler would be best suited for students with no experience in Ada
  Look at Janus Ada for PCs.  It has good compile time diagnostic messages,
but it also has invaluable run-time diagnostics*.  It's how I learned Ada.
I'm sure RR has a reasonable academic price.  www.rrsoftware.com

* For instance it gives:
** Unhandled CONSTRAINT_ERROR
   Index or Subtype out of bounds - Pos of Error Value =  67
On Line Number 12 In TEST.DECREMENT
Called from line number 18 In TEST.NEXT_DAY
Called from line number 25 In TEST

  when you run:
procedure test is
  type liquid is range 32 .. 212;
  type pleasant is range 68 .. 72;

  procedure decrement(x : in out liquid) is
  begin
    x := x-1;
  end decrement;

  procedure decrement(x : in out pleasant) is
  begin
    x := x-1;
  end decrement;

  procedure next_day(y : in out liquid; z : in out pleasant) is
  begin
    decrement(y);
    decrement(z);
  end next_day;

  water_temperature : liquid := 34;
  air_temperature : pleasant := 69;
begin
    next_day(water_temperature, air_temperature);
    next_day(water_temperature, air_temperature);
    next_day(water_temperature, air_temperature);
    next_day(water_temperature, air_temperature);
    next_day(water_temperature, air_temperature);

end test;