From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,80ba3207a644d932 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed2.dallas1.level3.net!news.level3.com!newsfeed-00.mathworks.com!nntp.TheWorld.com!not-for-mail From: Robert A Duff Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Gnat, tasking, Vista Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:24:24 -0500 Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: References: <13pcv4e8914hq93@corp.supernews.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell01.theworld.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: pcls4.std.com 1201116265 28553 192.74.137.71 (23 Jan 2008 19:24:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@TheWorld.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:24:25 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.1008 (Gnus v5.10.8) Emacs/21.3 (irix) Cancel-Lock: sha1:YYsVoZPO4rH9GBzmGIF3D/OOLbs= Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:19567 Date: 2008-01-23T14:24:24-05:00 List-Id: tmoran@acm.org writes: > A bug that is known and successfully worked-around isn't a bug, it's > a feature. Probably not a nice feature, but not a nasty surprise waiting > to bite you. > Personally, I usually don't enjoy time spent finding the bugs in > other people's (compilers or OSes etc) code. I usually have little idea > where the problem might be and there's a lot of grunt work trying to > cut down to a small program that demonstrates the problem (see the > recent thread on "Ada obfuscation"). And when there is a simple > example, learning what to avoid may be its only payback, while those > responsible take months, or even years, to release a corrected version. > My understanding is that the current Gnat is not a 3.15p with > improvements, but is rather a substantially new thing, with new, > unknown, bugs. Is that a mis-understanding? I can understand the reluctance to upgrade software, in general. But if you're upgrading the OS (Windows XP to Vista) you really need to upgrade GNAT as well. There are several ways in which Vista is incompatible, so it's not surprising that a version of GNAT that predates Vista doesn't work! The DEP issue was mentioned. I suppose you can turn off DEP in Vista, either in general, or for particular programs. (I don't know -- I've never used Vista myself.) The latest GNAT compiler no longer uses trampolines (which don't work when DEP is turned on). However, it can still generate code that uses trampolines in some cases. We've mostly fixed that, too, but there's still a lot of testing to do. Getting rid of trampolines is a change in the guts of the back end, and is target dependent. Pointers to nested functions in C code will probably continue to use trampolines for the forseeable future, but we can do better in pure Ada code. - Bob