Re: [Mingw-users] Re: Ada compiler not configured correctly

[Jerry v. D. <jv...@at...>]

Danny Smith writes:

 >  --- Paul Moore <gu...@mo...> wrote: > "Jerry van Dijk"
 > <jv...@at...> writes:
 > > 
 > 
 > > > so you need to define the environment variable ADA_OBJECTS_PATH to
 > > > point to the adalib directory and ADA_INCLUDE_PATH to point at the
 > > > adainclude directory (both under lib/gcc-lib/mingw32/3.1)
 > > 
 > > Grumph. That's fair enough as a workaround for now, but I'd prefer it
 > > if gnat worked like the rest of mingw, needing nothing but the
 > > mingw\bin directory added to %PATH.
 > 
 > Grumph indeed.  I share your preference. But, you must remember that this is
 > initial port of Ada as integrated part of GCC, so these kind of nits will take
 > some time to sort out.  I really don't like idea of having to play with the
 > registry.

Obviously the scheme used by GNAT was not put in place to annoy people, its
there for a reason :-)

1. The GNAT versions published by ACT come with an additional Windows support
   package, that includes a Win32 binding and a number of tools useful for
   Windows programming. Also there are additional packages to support COM,
   Distributed processing, a visual Ada-aware debugger, GTkAda, etc. One of 
   the additional tools is GNATREG, to register new runtime libraries, this is 
   used by the tools above.

2. Currently Mingw (and probably the gcc 3.x tree) only contains the native
   compiler (Host=Windows, Target=Windows). However there other versions,
   like a Windows hosted compiler targeting, say, VxWorks on PowerPC. And these
   have to work with environments like Tornado on Windows.

3. People like myself use different runtime libraries (by default I always
   recompile an additional Ada Runtime Library with debug info). Using GNATREG
   it is easy to switch between them.

4. Ada is often used in conjunction with other languages, for example C++.
   The current scheme makes it easier (IMHO) to link in C++ code that
   for example is compiled with the 2.95.2 compiler.

Alas, most of the above does currently not work with the mingw port, as it
is compiled with the GNAT build-in Win32 registry support disabled.

That said, I will try to build a mingw 3.1 version of the Window support 
package from the 3.14p source.

-- 
--  Jerry van Dijk   | email: jv...@at...
--  Leiden, Holland  | web:   users.ncrvnet.nl/gmvdijk