From: Robert Dewar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2007 11:40:34 -0400
> Jack Howarth wrote: > > Is an external copy of GNAT really required to build the > > ada language in gcc trunk? On powerpc-apple-darwin9, I am > > seeing configure fail with... > > > > configure: error: GNAT is required to build ada > > > > ...when ada is added to the language set. Certainly > > this isn't the desired behavior. > > GNAT is written in Ada, so you need an Ada compiler to > start a build, just as you need a C compiler to build > the C compiler. But we don't need a fortran compiler to compile the gfortran compiler, and we don't need a c++ compiler to compile the g++ compiler, and we don't even need a java compiler to compile the gcj compiler. Sorry, I just couldn't resist. This justification for the ADA situation is just about as absurd as it gets :) It really doesn't surprise me that users consider this extremely awkward. Even C# runtimes like MONO provide a way to bootstrap even if you do not have any C# compiler at all available on your system.
