Re: What's the state of current Win32 PC Ada compilers?

[Stephen Leake <Stephen.Leake@gsfc.nasa.gov>]

"John *NOSPAM* Bunk" <jkb@nospam.vcnet.com> writes:

> Hello,
> I was wondering if anyone in USENET land had any real experience with using
> Aeonix or RR Software's Win32 capable Ada compilers for a large Windows NT
> project?  If so, was the compiler fast/slow?  Stable/Buggy?  Code produced
> had compiler induced bugs / clean?  Development environment decent / hard to
> use?  Debugging facilities?  Would you use these compilers again?

I'm using Aonix ObjectAda 7.1.1 on a medium Windows NT project. The
user interface and a large part of the system is in Borland C++ 5.02;
some models are in Ada. I also use GNAT Ada; I have not used RR's compiler.

Most of the system is in Borland because ObjectAda wasn't out when we
started. As soon as ObjectAda 7.1.1 came out, I started writing new code
in Ada, because I just can't stand C++. I'm using ObjectAda instead of
GNAT because it's easier to write a DLL, and I can afford their
maintenance fees. 

I have found bugs in ObjectAda; none are showstoppers, except that the
debugger is practically useless. Fortunately, I've been able to use
GNAT and gdb to find any Ada bugs, then recompile with ObjectAda. All
compiler bugs were compile-time (ie, it won't compile legal Ada); I
have found no bugs due to bad code generation. Aonix just released
7.1.2, which should fix some of the bugs I reported.

The compiler is fast enough for me (Windows NT 133 Mhz Pentium 64 Meg
RAM). Not quite as fast as GNAT.

The IDE that comes with ObjectAda is a pain - use NT Emacs from
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/voelker/ntemacs.html . I use emacs
to develop the C++ code, too.

Aonix support has been adequate, once I figured out how to pay for it.
They have not sent me any patches (they don't promise too), but they
have responded to bug reports in a timely manner, and as I said above,
I didn't find any bugs that I really needed patches for.

Aonix is redesigning the debugger for version 7.1.3, and they are more
committed to the Windows platform than ACT (they sell supported Win32
and MFC bindings), so yes, I will continue to use ObjectAda.

-- Stephe