From owner-freebsd-ports Sun Sep 24 13:34:53 1995 Return-Path: owner-ports Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id NAA12745 for ports-outgoing; Sun, 24 Sep 1995 13:34:53 -0700 Received: from localhost.lightside.com (user57.lightside.com [198.81.209.57]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id NAA12734 for ; Sun, 24 Sep 1995 13:34:46 -0700 Received: (from jehamby@localhost) by localhost.lightside.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) id NAA00497; Sun, 24 Sep 1995 13:35:42 -0700 Date: Sun, 24 Sep 1995 13:34:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Jake Hamby X-Sender: jehamby@localhost To: ports@FreeBSD.org Subject: GNAT Ada compiler: chicken & egg? Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-ports@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I'm currently in the process of compiling the GNU/NYU Ada Translator (or GNAT) which sits on top of GCC. Since GNAT itself is WRITTEN in Ada, it's going to be a tough chicken-and-egg sort of thing: It looks like I'm going to have to cross-compile GNAT on another machine which already has GNAT (my SPARCstation 20 at work, for example) and then, if all goes well, I'll be able to compile GNAT with itself on my FreeBSD box. A couple of questions for other ports hackers: When I'm finished, I guess I'd have to upload GNAT as both a package and a port, since unless you already have GNAT, building it from source is next to impossible. Has anyone else pursued or ported similar "self-compiling" programs, and can you give me any tips? BTW, in case you're wondering why I'm messing with a language like Ada, suffice it to say that it's the primary language at my university (Cal Poly, Pomona), and it's a very powerful, modern, object-oriented sort of language (esp. Ada 95 compilers such as GNAT), although very anal-retentive (more so than Pascal, even).. :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jake Hamby | E-Mail: jehamby@lightside.com Student, Cal Poly University, Pomona | System Administrator, JPL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------