Re: Is it possible to build an Ada cross-compiler for an 8-bit embedded target now that gcc 3.X has support for Ada?

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

"Stephen Leake" <Stephe.Leake@nasa.gov> wrote in message
news:uptfp3bpu.fsf@nasa.gov...
> Note that the "no runtime" subset of Ada is still a _far_ better
> language than C. So it is worth persuing, since you already have the
> code-generation part in the gcc back end. The result won't be "Ada",
> but it will be a very useful subset.
>
> GNAT provides a "pragma No_Runtime", which reports errors for any code
> that would use the runtime, so you can tell when you need to change
> the code.

I'm a bit suspicious of this claim, mainly because you'd have to run with
checks suppressed in order to avoid use of the runtime. (Handling/reporting
any failure, even to abort the program, would require some sort of runtime.
Just stopping the program with no indication of why doesn't need any
runtime, but its just as useful as running with checks suppressed.) Runtime
checking is a very important part of Ada, (and one which doesn't add much
overhead in general), and running without it would seem to be writing C with
Ada syntax. After all, it's basic exception handling that makes Ada programs
so bullet-proof. (The AdaIC webserver has yet to log any downtime related to
the program itself - all downtime has been hardware or OS failures.)

                          Randy.