News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Combining GNAT with LLVM. Parent comment

Re:Combining GNAT with LLVM by fiddlerwoaroof on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @01:13PM (#21127889)
It's complicated, I believe the way it works is that the Community Edition you can download from the Adacore website doesn't have the runtime exception but, if it's built from the code in the FSF's repo, it does. This is Adacore's scheme to make sure that people making money off Ada buy a license.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Combining GNAT with LLVM by protomyth on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @01:16PM (#21127924)
That approach worked so well for the Lisp and Smalltalk vendors.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Combining GNAT with LLVM by 7thaccount on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @02:22PM (#21128865)
It might work if the US Department of Defense, NASA, and Boeing are customers (my assumption) and they keep their company small.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Combining GNAT with LLVM by planteen on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @05:40PM (#21131012)
I think that is exactly what OP meant, as in, no new projects or further Ada marketshare. I think the same can be said for Lisp and Smalltalk.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Combining GNAT with LLVM by 7thaccount on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @06:05AM (#21134809)
Yea, but Lisp and Smalltalk machines were tied to hardware that couldn't keep up and most of the government AI projects died during the 80s AI winter.

Adacore is (I'm guessing) the main vendor for lots of aerospace projects with deep pockets that aren't going away soon and it runs on mostly anything GCC runs on. They're also expanding their business into areas where cyber security is a concern.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Combining GNAT with LLVM by planteen on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @02:22PM (#21139303)
My experience with Ada is you have legacy code bases and yes, forking these will continue for the next 30 years for similar products. But would anyone in 2019 really choose Ada for a design start in a DoD/aerospace realtime embedded system or cybersecurity application? I doubt it. It's hard enough to find developers in "common" languages.

I think its very telling that real-world JOVIAL code bases are being converted to C, not Ada. Ada was supposed to replace JOVIAL. http://www.semdesigns.com/Products/MigrationTools/JOVIAL2C.h...

There are also tools to convert Ada to C/C++/Java: https://www.mapusoft.com/ada-to-c-changer/

I'd start any new embedded system in C or C++ with an appropriate coding standard, static analysis checks, and perhaps run-time ones. No way I would consider Ada. Maybe someday Rust will penetrate more, but it has a ways to go.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Combining GNAT with LLVM by pjmlp on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @03:11AM (#21134029)
Many seem to think GNAT is the only game in town, when actually there are 6 commercial compilers still available.

Just like Lisp and Smalltalk still have their commercial offerings available.

Naturally communities that want to be payed for their work, while refusing to pay for their tools aren't aware of such offerings.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Combining GNAT with LLVM by 7thaccount on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @06:07AM (#21134820)
I'd like to know how big adoption is for the other commercial Ada compiler companies.

I imagine Adacore has a larger share, but have no data to back that up.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Combining GNAT with LLVM by pjmlp on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @06:39AM (#21134974)
Big enough for those companies to stay in business.
[ Parent | on HN ]