[Info-vax] Making the CRTL version dependency information useful

[Simon Clubley]

On 2018-01-15, johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk <johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On Monday, 15 January 2018 16:19:48 UTC, Ian Miller  wrote:
>> 
>> There was a OpenVMS ADA from Adacore but they stopped supporting it. 
>> There is this one http://www.vmsadaall.org/index.php/en/ 
>> 
>> I hope VSI are talking to someone about ADA as there is definitely a need for a support OpenVMS ADA compiler
>
> Do you have a definitive reference for "they stopped supporing 
> it"? There are signs from 2017 that although 'it' may have gone 
> away from the AdaCore website, 'it' can still be done, with or
> without involving AdaCore.
>

Yes and No.

I was never able to get an Ada compiler built for VMS Alpha using
the pure FSF sources. The compiler you refer to appears to be have
been built using the GNAT Pro compiler as the starting point which
is an option not available to me and would make the process
considerably easier and more viable.

The issue is that GNAT is written in Ada which means you need an
Ada compiler to compile it.

The approach I took was to try to build a cross compiler gcc/binutils
toolchain on Linux for a VMS Alpha target. Using this approach, it
looks like either various bits might be missing or there are some
non-obvious steps needed which I have missed.

I should point out that I have built gcc cross compilers from source
a good many times and for a range of targets so the general process
is well known to me.

While I was not able to get Ada built, I was able to get a C cross
compiler built using the same method and binaries produced using
this Linux based cross compiler ran on VMS Alpha.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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