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iJed · Oct 21, 2001, 09:17 PM

Is there an Ada95 compiler available for Mac OS X? I am being forced to use this language for comp sci at uni for the second year running so I could really do with a Mac OS X native compiler. I know that the source code for GNAT is available but I assume that it does not build Mac OS X PPC binaries so I have not tried compiling it. Any help would be, err..., helpful.

speirsfr · Oct 22, 2001, 03:27 AM

Heh, I bet you go to uni here.

Don't know about gnat. I don't think you should *assume* that it won't work - I thought GNAT was just some kind of frontend to the gcc backend. There was a distro of gnat for powerpc Linux a while back, but I never got that to work either....

Maybe check fink (http://fink.sourceforge.net)?
Fraser

iJed · Oct 22, 2001, 04:44 PM

Originally posted by speirsfr:
Heh, I bet you go to uni here.

You are correct here! Glasgow must be the only University in the UK if not the world that uses Ada!

Don't know about gnat. I don't think you should *assume* that it won't work - I thought GNAT was just some kind of frontend to the gcc backend. There was a distro of gnat for powerpc Linux a while back, but I never got that to work either....

I think you may be correct about GNAT - it seems to be some kind of translator rather than a compiler. I think I'll download it and try and compile it.

eevyl · Oct 22, 2001, 05:08 PM

Count one more University that uses Ada. I study at Universidad de M�laga and I have to use Ada95 for some realtime system programming.

I was also wondering if the UNIX sources of GNAT Ada95 would work on Mac OS X. I will download them and try too.

speirsfr · Oct 23, 2001, 07:33 AM

iJed, Ada is good for you. Honest. Wait till you take the DCS Haskell course (Functional Programming 2), then you will want to be back in ada ;-)

Anyway, I had a play about with gnat 3.13, and it is designed to be compiled with gcc 2.8.1 (which I couldn't get to compile on OSX 10.1: "Configuration powerpc-apple-darwin1.4 not supported")

I'm hesitant to replace the cc that comes in the dev tools, but my plan of attack would be to recompile the appropriate gcc and put it somewhere else like /usr/local/gnat/ and get that into your path.

GNAT does seem to be a frontend to the gcc code generator, so I would expect it to be able to emit binaries for Darwin, if you can get it all to compile.

Maybe you should check out the gcc from Darwin instead of the GNU one, which is what I did.

More info will come if I get any more.
Fraser

iJed · Oct 23, 2001, 03:29 PM

Originally posted by speirsfr:
iJed, Ada is good for you. Honest. Wait till you take the DCS Haskell course (Functional Programming 2), then you will want to be back in ada ;-)

What language do they use in FP2? I hope it is Java or some form of C since I have been programming in both for a few years and am much more skilled in them than I am in Ada.

Kristoff · Oct 24, 2001, 02:18 AM

If it makes you all feel any better, I had to use Ada 95 as well at Northern Arizona University for a course on RTS.
It was my first exposure, and it was interesting, but I much prefer Java, but then again, I don't make RTS for a living either.

speirsfr · Oct 24, 2001, 06:59 AM

Originally posted by iJed:


What language do they use in FP2? I hope it is Java or some form of C since I have been programming in both for a few years and am much more skilled in them than I am in Ada.

Haskell.

It's a functional language about which I have forgotten more than I ever want to remember again. I recall it had some nice syntax features (like list generators) but it's a case of a language that "takes an ideological point of view and drives it into the ground" (was it Larry Wall that said that?)

It shows a distressing lack of recognition of the world outside lambda-calculus. OK, and now I'm showing a distressing lack of knowledge of Haskell.

I'll stop talking about stuff I'm not qualified to discuss now, OK?
Fraz

raia · Oct 24, 2001, 05:34 PM

Florida Institute of Technology (fit.edu) made us use Ada as well.

believe that was part of the reason I left CS for IT.
--
raia

iJed · Oct 25, 2001, 10:52 AM

From http://gcc.gnu.org

"October 2, 2001
Ada Core Technologies, Inc, has contributed its GNAT Ada 95 front end and associated tools. The GNAT compiler fully implements the Ada language as defined by the ISO/IEC 8652 standard."

and

"The next major release, GCC 3.1, will also include an Ada front end."

Hope Apple updates to GCC 3.1 instead of remaining in 2.95.2.

[ 10-25-2001: Message edited by: iJed ]