Irvine Compiler has concented to release in Executable form its C
header file to Ada translator free of charge. This is the initial
release of this translator.  It is my hope that it soon will be
provided in source form.  Please be patient.


Included with the example will be a simple example of how to quickly
(less than 6 seconds on an hp 700) generate a binding to X windows
that you can compile.  With it will be a simple hello world X program
that you can then compile and run that uses the X binding.



RATIONALE

The C programming language enjoys an enormous amount of popularity
thanks to its free distribution with the Unix operating systems and to
its early acceptance among the accedemic community.  That being the
case there is a large amount of useful software, libraries and
algorithms that are freely available to C programmers.  I'd like to
provide a means of making that software base easily accessible to the
Ada community as well.


DISTRIBUTION

Please send me mail if you would like a copy of the translator.  I
will uuencode it and send it to you.  You will need to provide me with
the type of the machine you'd like to host it on (sun, pc, spark,
hp...).  I do not promise to have a port for your target.  I am
purposely NOT telling you the names of the machines I currently
support because I'd also like to find out what machines are in demand.


------------- scotts

Irvine Compiler Corporation (ICC) has agreed to let me release (in
executable form only for now) the C header file to Ada translator
that I've written.  This is a preliminary trial release to get
feed-back on its Ada portability and performance.  It is my hope that
it will be provided in source form soon.  Please be patient.

As an example of how c2ada works, I'm hoping to include an example
that converts X-windows C header files to Ada entirely automatically.
The translation is fast (approximately 6 seconds for all Xlib files on
an HP-9000/710) and (hopefully) 100% complete.  The generated Ada
files should compile using any Ada compiler that supports pragma
INTERFACE (to C) and pragma INTERFACE_NAME.  I'm also including a
"hello world" program which uses the binding.  You will find more
documentation about the implementation details with the release.


RATIONALE

The C programming language enjoys a great deal of popularity thanks to
its free distribution with the Unix operating system and its early
acceptance among the academic community.  Large amounts of useful
software, libraries and algorithms are freely available to C
programmers just for the asking.  I'd like to provide a means of
making this software base easily accessible to Ada programmers as
well.


DISTRIBUTION

Please send me mail if you would like a copy of the translator.  I
will uuencode and send it to you.  Be sure to provide the type of
machine you'd like it to run on (Sparc, Sun-3, PC, SGI, HP, MIPS,
etc.) and the operating system you're using.  I'm not promising to
have a port for your particular target, so be prepared for a "sorry,
its not ready yet" reply.  I am purposely NOT providing the names of
the currently supported hosts because I'm interested in seeing which
systems are being used for Ada development out there in "net-land".
