Re: Ada files now checked in

[Kevin Handy <kth at srv dot net>]

dewar@gnat.com wrote:
> 
> I must say that to me the simplest thing is that you consider only two
> scenarios:
> 
> 1. You obtain the necessary gnat1 and gnatbind from a special repository
> of starter binaries for gnat bootstrapping. These are versions that are
> guaranteed to be appropriate starting points.
> 
> 2. You have a complete gnat that you have built from the sources
> 
> It seems to me that trying to use miscelleanous versions of gnat installed
> in various ways from various sources, with no guarantee that the version
> you are trying to use is suitable for bootstrapping is asking for problems.

Would it be possible to supply a 'java' (or some other engine) version
of the ADA compiler that could be used to bootstrap it?  You would then
only need to supply a pre-compiled ADA-to-bytecode compiler (in
bytecode)
to be able to bootstrap the ADA compiler.

1  source -> engine(bytecode-bytecode-compiler) ->
bytecode-native-compiler
2  source -> engine(bytecode-native-compiler) -> native-native-compiler
3? source -> native-native-compiler -> native-native-compiler

Not having looked into the Java Bytecode, how much would it need to
be extended to be usable as a target for the various compilers,
and how hard would it be to write a backend that targeted this engine?
Maybe a emulator for an existing targeted CPU could be used for the
bytecode engine instead.

Is this ADA discussion about bootstraping going to be duplicated when
the pascal front-end is checked in (is it written in pascal)?
If so, a more general approach may be needed to simplify bringing
everything up on a new machine.