Re: Porting GNAT to Debian Hurd

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <Xns90C7553D53700charleshixsonearthli@207.217.77.23>, Charles Hixson
says...
>
>Exposing my ignorance:
>When I first encountered Algol, I discovered that the basic 
>specs were an Algol compiler that was written in a simple form 
>of Algol.  This seemed quite strange, but I was told that it was 
..
>This seems to be the root of the problem here.  The underlying 
>compiler for the language that GNAT is written in isn't some 
>small stripped down subset.  It's Ada.  So you need a complete 
>compiler to build a compiler.  I suppose that cross-

This isn't just some strange coincidence. Just about *every* compiler works that
way. GCC certianly does (you need a C compiler to compile it. My first run at it
I used the Sun C compiler, then bootstrapped using the resulting gcc compiler).

It may put your mind at rest a bit to know that:

o  There *is* an Ada compiler that outputs ANSI C (Intermetrics).
o  Gnat does *not* use every feature in the language in its own sources, so you
don't really need a full Ada 95 compiler. 
o  Anyone with the technical chops to port GNAT to a new platform shouldn't have
too much trouble figuring out how to build and use a GNAT cross-compiler.
o  The good folks at ACT are looking at providing bootstraping binaries for some
platforms already. (see http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2001-06/msg01055.html )


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