Hi Fernando,

Fernando Oleo Blanco <irvise_ml@irvise.xyz> writes:

> I have talked with some people over at IRC and they recommended the use
> of the smaller GCC-Ada/GNAT binaries from Debian (even from older
> releases) and try to build an up-to-date Ada compiler toolchain with it.
>
> However, that would be a lot of work to get going and it may require a
> lot of trial and error for it to fully work. [...]

I did this five years ago!  Attached is a package that constructs a
working Ada compiler from Debian 8 (Jessie) binaries.  There are also
some packages that loosely follow the Guix commencement of GCC (as of
five years ago), but include GNAT.

Cf. https://logs.guix.gnu.org/guix/2018-09-04.log#165534

I just tested building ‘gnat-debian’ and ‘gnat-boot0’.  They still work!
The former is GCC 4 and the latter is (now) GCC 11.  I also built a
basic Ada program with ‘gnat-boot0’.  The rest of it may or may not
work.  The ‘gnat-5’ package is no longer appropriate, obviously.  :)

I hope that helps.  FWIW, I still think Debian is the best option here
for a bootstrapping binary.  Ada-Ed and old GNAT are the most likely
option for proper bootstrapping.  I found a yacc and lex grammar for Ada
95, too, but I can’t remember if it is freely licensed.  It could be
used to bridge the gap between Ada-Ed and old GNAT (maybe).


-- Tim