Forward in code

A Makefile hack

2012-02-21T04:01:00.000-08:00

I had a problem with GNU Make where multiple targets were createdfrom one prerequisite.

Catching exceptions in GDB

2012-01-29T10:44:00.000-08:00

There's a problem running gdb from GNAT GPL 2011 (which works fine with programs compiled with GNAT GPL 2011) on programs compiled with GCC 4.6 on Max OS X Lion and possibly earlier: you can't catch exceptions as you'd expect:


   (gdb) break exception
   Unable to insert catchpoint. Try to start the program first.

Copying an XML document, with changes

2012-01-23T09:50:00.000-08:00

I needed to modify an XML document (well, strictly an XMI document produced by ArgoUML). An XSLT stylesheet did the job.

Lines of code

2012-01-19T08:56:00.000-08:00

Recently, tonyg asked on comp.lang.ada for a code counter. There were a couple of recommendations, including gnat metric; however, my favourite is this shell script:

Building GCC again

2011-11-04T04:43:00.000-07:00

A colleague suggested that I write up building FSF GCC with GNAT for Mac OS X. The notes of an experimental process using GCC 4.6.1 are here; this is somewhat less experimental, and uses the GCC repository.
Read more »

VMware Fusion 4 and Debian

2011-10-28T12:54:00.000-07:00

VMwareFusion (the version of VMware for Mac OS X) recently took tonagging me to upgrade to version 4. This is a paid upgrade, but nottoo steep, so I took the plunge.Read more »

Building ASIS

2011-10-15T06:40:00.000-07:00

This is a note on building ASIS for GCC 4.6.
Read more »

A little problem with gprbuild

2011-10-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

I was configuring AWS (from the git repository), and make setup failed disastrously.
Read more »

Building GCC

2011-09-08T12:39:00.000-07:00

A colleague has suggested that I write up building FSF GCC with GNAT for Mac OS X; these are the notes.
Read more »

Expressiveness in Python

2011-08-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

I've been having fun reworking the Literate Programming tool nuweb in Python; the Mercurial repository for the rework can be browsed here. On the way I've come across a neat hack, and a rather unlikely workaround for Python's lack of a switch statement.
Read more »

Debugging and stack traces on Mac OS X Lion

2011-08-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion (really, Xcode 4) has changed the way that the system linker works in a way which makes debugging and interpreting stack traces difficult-to-impossible without special action.
Read more »

Debugging with Mac OS X shared libraries

2011-08-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

Writing Ada means you don't need the debugger that often. But when you do need it, you really need it. And often the reason will be an exception, which you'll want to catch and investigate.
Read more »

When you need gprbuild

2011-07-24T08:22:00.000-07:00

Most of the time, if your code is entirely in Ada, it'll build just fine with gnatmake. You only need gprbuild for mixed-language programming.

However, there's one case in which you need gprbuild, even for Ada-only code; it's when you're building a shared library on Mac OS X (Darwin).
Read more »

Building gprbuild-gpl-2011

2011-07-09T12:19:00.000-07:00

The way to build Ada code with GNAT used to be to use gnatmake. This still works, but there's a new kid on the block: gprbuild.
Read more »

Starting (for 10)

2011-07-09T09:37:00.000-07:00

Until now I've relied on posting to comp.lang.ada, with the occasional foray onto the Ada group at identi.ca, and a notebook on TiddlyWiki.

I think now's the time to look into this newfangled blogging thing.