[Info-vax] Ada on VMS, was: Re: Free Pascal for VMS ?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-05-10 17:33:54 +0000, Simon Clubley said:

> On 2018-05-10, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2018-05-10 00:11:59 +0000, Arne Vajhj said:
>> 
>>> Third tier: C++, Ada, PL/I, Macro-32
>> 
>> Support for clang gets both C and C++, Ada is third-party, PL/I is no 
>> longer offered and AFAIK didn't get ported, and Macro32 is a sizable 
>> hunk of OpenVMS.  There's a decent-sized hunk of Ada in the operating 
>> system.  And the APIs for that part of OpenVMS do need some work around 
>>  complexity and fitness for common uses, but I digress.
> 
> Ada was third party, but I thought AdaCore had terminated support for 
> GNAT on VMS. Is that wrong or has the situation changed there ?

SMOP.   This once the x86-64 port and the llvm bits are available, and 
as you've already seen...

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.ada/umrsksm3nEs/Z4Itf7c5BgAJ

etc.

> Is there still Ada code in the Itanium VMS code base and if so, which 
> compiler is used to compile it ?

The OpenVMS security server and related work including ACME was written 
in Ada.  I'd be surprised if either HPE or VSI changed that on OpenVMS 
Alpha or on OpenVMS I64.

What VSI has in mind for the future of that security server code with 
the OpenVMS port to x86-64?   If there's a lack of a native compiler, 
then cross-compilation wouldn't surprise me; as an intermediate step 
and an expediency.

I don't see a particularly robust market for selling compilers for 
OpenVMS.    Not when comparing the (large) investment and the prices 
that the customers are becoming accustomed to paying.  Then there's the 
longer-term declining trend with Ada usage, and the trend with the 
prices that many vendors are (not) charging developers for their 
platform-specific development tools, too.


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