Re: ADA frontend?

[joel at OARcorp dot com]

On Fri, 4 Sep 1998, Alex Buell wrote:

> > Note, the Ada front-end is actually written in Ada, so you're going to
> > need binaries for a Vax (?!?) or you'll have to make Ada work as a
> > cross compiler.  It's been done, but I've gotten the impression it is
> > not easy.
> 
> You need ADA to build ADA? Oh dear. It'd be nice if the ADA front end was
> rewritten in C to drop into the egcs system (after all that would be quite
> useful for porting to platforms that doesn't have an ADA compiler handy).

This would be a substantial effort.  It is a lot of code. 

> Hmm, (ruminates) might be a nice project to fill up these lonely winter
> nights. 

What would be more helpful is documenting/simplifying the process of
bringing up GNAT on an unsupported host (i.e. one with gcc already but not
Ada). The basic idea is to start with a supported host, build a cross
compiler to target the new target, and take the executables to that new
host.  Pretty soon you should be able to get everything on the new host.  

In the worst case, binutils does not support the new host so you can't
build a cross compiler. You have to produce assembly files and assemble
them and link them to produce  executables on the new host.

I have never done this personally.  My understanding is that this is a
variation on the procedure for briing up gcc itself on a new host.

--joel
Joel Sherrill                    Director of Research & Development
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