cbind - Translator for "thin" Ada bindings to C
		-- see also DOCS --

REVISION 4:

	Includes new features added by Mitch Gart to support Ada 95 and
the gnat compiler.


This tool is designed to AID in the creation of Ada bindings to C.
The code is provided "as is" without any warranty whatsoever.  The
code is NOT copyrighted but is instead published to the public domain
as free software.  Any attempt to copyright the tool will be refutable
in a court of law.

I am NOT intending to imply that the bindings generated by this
translator will be complete.  This tool MAY/MAY NOT be useful as an
AID to generating bindings.  Hopefully it can do a lot of the grunt
work for you.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: if the source file you're translating is copyrighted then
the translation of the source is also copyrighted!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

This tool should compile easily as distributed for hosts which have
already been ported to.  If it has not yet been ported to your host
see the section PORTING below.

        Ported to:
                Sun4m SunOS 4.1.2
                Sun4d SunOS 5.3 (solaris)
                SGI IRIX 4.0.5
                IBM RS6000 250 AIX 3.2.5

To simplify distribution of this tool I am making the source base line
of this tool available in 1 tar file which shouldn't update very often.
To quickly add features and fix bugs I will make patches available
on the rational ftp server.  If you have fixes/features to add please
mail them to me as context diffs so I can incorporate them into the
tool.  I'll then post them to the rational ftp server.  If I don't
receive them by email then the next release of the tool may not have
them added.

You may wish to download the patches to this tool and apply them to the
code before you continue.  Note the number that is on your tar file.
This is the version identifier that you'll need to get the patches
for.  For example, if your cbind distribution file is cbind1.tar.gz
then your version identifier is 1 and you should mget cbind1.patch*.
If your distribution file name is cbind2.tar.gz then the version is 2
and you should mget cbind2.patch*.

If you've never used patch don't worry, it's simple.  Get the source
for it off the internet, compile it, and read the man page.  An
example of patching cbind would be:

        % gunzip cbind2.patch2
        % patch < cbind2.patch2
        % make touch
        % make

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE:  You should "make touch" after applying the patches if you do
not have yacc and gperf.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

When fully built you will have 3 executables that you'll need to copy
somewhere in your path.

        cbind	- a cc like driver
        cbfe	- the bindings generator
        cbpp	- a C preprocessor

The make will also produce 2 other semi-useful executables:

        cdep	- A makefile dependency generator
        htype	- A program to figure sizeof and alignof info

PORTING:

The code is designed to isolate all machine specific information in an
auto generated header file called "hostinfo.h".  This will never be
perfect so expect to have to modify the source if it doesn't compile
immediately.

I'd like to isolate other host specific information in host.h instead
of having them propagate throughout the source.  If your maching and C
compiler support very large integer and floating point types you may
wish to change the definitions of host_int_t and host_float_t in
host.h.  This will require a little extra work but may increase the
number of files cbind is able to translate correctly.

Check the file macro.c to make sure it contains all the builtin defines
that your host C compiler uses.  You can also see them by executing
% cbind -builtin
Add any defines you're missing.

You should always use the -cs switch during this porting period.  It
causes the output to be annotated with comments as to the sizeof and
alignof of all decls it processes.  If these are not correct then
you cannot trust the binding will accurately represent the C source.
If the sizeof/alignof info is out of wack the most likely cause is
that the definitions in hostinfo.h are not correct.

You can configure some of the type naming by modifying the config.h
header file.

After your port is complete and the tool is behaving well please
mail me context diffs of your changes (see: diff -c).  Also let me
know what host machine and OS version it pertains to (see: uname -a).


Mark Schimmel
mjs@netcom.com