Re: ANN: Kickstarter for beginning work on a new open-source Compiler

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Wed, 19 Mar 2014 09:02:02 -0400, Peter Chapin wrote:

> The proposal is very ambitious because it provides both a complex IDE
> and a compiler for Ada 2012.

... designed in a [obscene, dying, vendor-locked, the list can easily be
continued] language like Delphi. I doubt Ada community will be eager to
contribute in Delphi. I did projects in Turbo, Object Pascal and Delphi,
never again!

> Thus as a potential Ada 2012 compiler writer I ask: what sort of APIs
> would be useful if one wanted to split off the code analysis and
> generation from the IDE itself and move it into a separately developed
> library?

Yes, and it is not the compiler alone to interact with the system. No less
important components are:

- source code control system
- project management system 
- debugger

Project management is especially important for Ada because Ada projects
mainly are cross-platform and/or embedded. That require handling of various
targets, cross-compilation, linking, uploading (for embedded targets) etc.
For example, mere abstraction of OS-specific dynamic linking as done by
GNAT project system is a huge task.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de