[AWS] "This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way" message from Gnat's copy of gcc

[Jocelyn Paine]

Hi Pascal. I've used Gnat and AWS before, and I'm reinstalling it on 
Windows XP after losing my hard disc. The versions now out seem to be 
newer than those I last used, and I'm getting problems with gcc crashing. 
While trying to sort these out, I've discovered that Gnat brings its own 
copy of gcc, which puzzles me. It's this gcc that crashes. But when I 
replace it by my own gcc, Gnat doesn't recognise it.

The details are: I'm installing under XP, running on a Toshiba Satellite 
Centrino. I downloaded Gnat and AWS yesterday from 
http://libre.adacore.com/libre/download2 , selecting 
gnat-gpl-2010-1-i686-pc-mingw21-bin.exe for GNAT_GPL, and 
aws-gpl-2.8.0-src.tgz for AWS. I installed Gnat so that it was in 
c:\GNAT\2010\ .

I then tried to start making AWS by running "make setup" under Cygwin. 
Before doing that, I reinstalled Cygwin and gcc, so that I should have the 
latest versions of both. When I called "make setup" under Cygwin, it gave 
this output:
   gcc -c check_config.c

   This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an
     unusual way.
   Please contact the application's support team for more information.
   gprbuild: *** compilation phase failed.

Still under Cygwin, I did a "find" on check_config.c so that I could try 
compiling it directly from the command line, to see what was happening. It 
was in the config/setup subdirectory. Its full path, given where I copied 
AWS to, was
   c:/temp/AWS/aws-gpl-2.8.0-src/config/setup .

I went to that subdirectory and typed
   gcc -c check_config.c
This worked, and when I then linked and ran check_config, I got the 
message
   Syntax: check_config <filename>

So gcc run from the command line worked, and the check_config.exe
that it and the linker generated was probably OK. I also tested gcc
on a Hello World program:
   gcc -c hello_world.c
When I linked and ran that, it worked. So I had to ask myself, why
does gcc crash when run from AWS's "make setup", but run OK from my 
Cygwin command line?

I wondered whether Gnat was using its own copy of gcc. So I went to my 
top-level Gnat directory, and looked for a gcc. And I found one in 
c:\GNAT\2010\bin\ . It has a gcc.exe, whose creation date is June 4th. 
When I tried running _this_ gcc on my Hello World program, it crashed with 
the same "This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an 
unusual way" message as above. So it looks as though Gnat 2010 supplies 
its own gcc, and this doesn't work on my system.

So I tried replacing Gnat's gcc by mine. My gcc is in /usr/bin/gcc . I 
copied that to c:/GNAT/2010/bin/gcc.exe . I then ran "make setup" again. 
This time, it crashed with the message
   setup.grp:31:09: warning: no compiler specified for language "C",
     ignoring all its sources
   setup.gpr:34:18: "check_config" is not a source of project "setup"
   gprbuild: problems with main sources

What's going on here? Should I be using the gcc supplied with Gnat or my 
own, and if the latter, how do I make setup.grp recognise it?

Kind regards,

Jocelyn Ireson-Paine
http://www.j-paine.org

Jocelyn's Cartoons:
http://www.j-paine.org/blog/jocelyns_cartoons/