> -----Original Message-----
> From: Randy Brukardt [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, September 09, 1999 4:58 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: c2ada
>
> > I am hoping someone can tell me I am wrong, and will point to some
> vendor
> > who supports a tool such as this (hosted on Linux, Solaris, or Windows
> NT).
>
> RRS had considered building such a tool commercially early on during the
> development of Ada 9x (possibly as part of the development of what became
> Claw). But the existence of c2ada made it likely that such a tool would
> not
> produce a lot of revenue, and we decided it we didn't need it for Claw. So
> we didn't do it.
>
> The thin bindings created by something like C2Ada don't buy you much
> anyway:
> they're at least as hard to use as the C code, impossible to debug
> (especially when something caused a mismatch of parameters), and don't do
> much to show off the advantages of programming in Ada. Programming with
> them
> is like writing C in Ada syntax. To make them usable, you have to wrap
> them
> in a real Ada package - but then you might as well have built the whole
> thing by hand. Which is why we built Claw...
>
>                                         Randy.
I disagree with those who say a thin binding doesn't buy you much.  It let's
you call a wide variety of third party libraries from Ada for which the
library vendor only supplies a C binding.  While it may not get you all the
benefits of a strongly typed thick Ada binding, a C header to Ada binding
generator would open a vast repository of third party libraries to Ada
programmers.

Rush Kester
Software Systems Engineer
AdaSoft at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.
email:  [log in to unmask]
phone: (240) 228-3030 (live M-F 9:30am-4:30pm, voicemail anytime)
fax:      (240) 228-6779