Re: Anybody in US using ADA ? New language competition? (long)

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

Marin David Condic wrote in message ...
>Obviously, you can't speak for all vendors, but you could speak for at
least
>*one* vendor. :-) (Probably, you also talk to most of the other ones
with
>your involvement in other areas of Ada.) Would there be any sympathy on
the
>part of the vendors (or RR Software?) to get some sort of "Conventional
Ada
>Library" going under the auspices of SIGAda? Would there be some
willingness
>on the part of the vendors (or RR Software) to distribute such a
library?


I'm sure the vendors are in favor of someone doing that. But it will
need to be vendor-neutral -- it does no good if most of the code only
compiles with GNAT. Then vendors will say -- yet another hobbyest
library for GNAT -- and ignore it.

I'll reiterate that our experience with Claw is that GNAT is no better
or worse than other Ada compilers for bugs. It allows some illegal code,
won't compile some legal code, etc. In order to have something useful to
end users, it really has to be the case that you can pick up the
packages off of the SigAda web site and use them, no matter what Ada
compiler you are using. For that to be the case, they have to have been
compiled successfully with at least 3 different Ada compilers.

Of course, some compilers may be just too buggy or limited to work with
some software. I suspect just making the code work on GNAT, ObjectAda,
and Rational Apex would be enough. You may not want to be restricted to
the least common denominator code (like we did with Claw).

Anyway, RRS would distribute such a library if it made sense, and making
it work did not take up too many resources. After all, given:
    10 bugs reported by customers;
    10 bugs in new ACATS tests; and
    10 bugs in a pseudo-standard library
it's fairly likely that work on the library will be later in the list.
:-)

              Randy Brukardt