Ada fails with "Compiler not installed on this system" in Linux Mint

1
votes

I've had some difficulty trying to obtain a working Ada compiler.

I had been attempting to install avr-ada on a Windows system. I've asked questions and been provided some good suggestions, but not quite there yet.

I've since tried to install and use GNAT on a Mint Linux system, but I keep getting stuck. I've downloaded and installed gcc-4.8.0.

Installed ok.

I then want to build the GNAT Ada compiler, but the manual is not exactly useful.

Every time I try to find installation instruction for GNAT, I find nothing of immediate use.

For example the details I have found state:

"Building the Ada compiler has special requirements, see below" But do not appear to have any content for how do build the Ada compiler anywhere.

Any ideas?

2
adagnat
what flavour of linux are you using ? – NWS
I've not tried gcc4.8.0 yet; 4.7.2 may be smoother. However ... you say you installed gcc4.8.0 - do you mean from packages or built from source? If you built from source, that implies an (older) C++ compiler pre-installed. Likewise, building Gnat from source implies an older Gnat pre-installed. Can you clarify what you have? – user_1818839
As this has been closed, I recommend taking the question to comp.lang.ada. – user_1818839
This is a perfectly reasonable question about "software tools commonly used by [Ada] programmers", #3 in the FAQ, and should be reopened. – Simon Wright
@SimonWright makes a good point. The question is a little off-topic and little non-constructive, but the goal is programing related rather than system specific. Voting to re-open so I can recommend VirtualBox. :-) – trashgod

2 Answers

1
votes

You could try your hand at my Slackware guide.

Just install VirtualBox on your Windows box and give Slackware a whirl in a VM. Actually if you don't want/need all the AdaCore stuff, Slackware comes with FSF GNAT out of the box. You don't really have to do anyting except call gnatmake to build your stuff.

But honestly, it's not that complicated to get GNAT GPL and the AdaCore projects up and running on Slackware.

For Debian (if you don't want to use the default Debian Ada packages) you could try the makefile done by Kim Rostgaard Christensen.

1
votes

As I understand it, Mint is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian - so you should be able to install the package gnat; it'll probably be GCC 4.6.

I'm not sure whether you need 4.8.0? If so, or of course if you can't install gnat, you'll need to build it (or to wait until it reaches Debian/Ubuntu/Mint, which could be a while). GCC 4.6 (with Ada support) should be OK for this, or you could install AdaCore's Libre version. I know that GNAT GPL 2012 will build GCC 4.8.0 on Mac OS X; I wrote up building GCC from SVN using GNAT GPL 2011 here, and building GCC 4.8.0 here.