Re: Support Metrics for Ada / C Projects

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

"Jeff C," <jcreem@yahoo.com> writes:

> "Sean Cleary" <seanearlyaug@hotmail.com> wrote in message 

> > 5 or more years ago a project I was associated with failed because the
> > Ada part of the team was crippled: no run time debug -- all reported
> > back stuff was machine/assembly language level. They took to heavily
> > instrumenting their code, and got huge printouts of exactly what was
> > happening. And had to look through it line by line, loop cycle by loop
> > cycle until the problem was found. That was so slow that it killed the
> > project. Please do not let this happen to you. Their conclusion was
> > that C++ with good tools would have been better. I hope that there are
> > now good tools for embedded Ada.

> I hate to feed the trolls but indicating that Ada tools for embedded were 
> bad 5 (or more?) years ago is not very helpful. There were bad Ada tools 5 
> years ago. There were bad C++ tools 5 years ago. In fact, there are almost 
> certainly more bad C++ tools than Ada tools (given that there are more C++ 
> tools in existance).
> 
> I have been using Ada since 1987. There were good tools then (VAX Ada was 
> pretty nice. Even for the embedded DEC OS). I've seen some bad tools too 
> (The Merdian Ada to C front end for the i860 comes to mind).

The VxWorks gdb from ACT with Ada support is pretty good. Looks very
nice with the (supported) GPS front-end, too!

I don't use it all that often, though ...

-- 
Simon Wright                               100% Ada, no bugs.