[GnomeAda] Which CORBA-implementation?

[Laurent Pautet]

| There are at least two GPL-ed CORBA-implementations that are
| potentialy usefull for GNOME programming with Ada:
| 
| 1. AdaBroker implemented in Ada95,
| 2. ORBit not implemented in Ada95 with an Ada binding implemented by
| GACK, the GNU Ada CORBA Kit.
| 
| Which implementation is most usefull for GNOME/Ada programmimg and
| what are the advantages and disadvantages for each? I see at least one
| advantage for AdaBroker and that is that it is implemented in Ada.

The advantage of GNACK is ORBit itself which is probably used by a
larger community. There are probably more services.

There is a difficult technical problem with GNACK because AFAIK, it
interfaces each C++ stub and skeleton with Ada. So, most of the time
it is quite tricky especially when you deal with exceptions. These
kind of ORBs have frequently their own thread library. It is also
difficult to have the Ada run-time working properly with these
threads. The translator is in perl and not easily maintanable. This is
the reason why we started the AdaBroker project.

AdaBroker is full Ada and provides most of the services of a CORBA
env. It is probably more tested then GNACK but less than ORBit.  Most
of the code has been developped by students. Some parts would need to
be redesigned. That's why Thomas Quinot is working on a new generation
of this project, DROOPI.

Both projects lack of developpers (there is probably only one
developper on GNACK if it is still maintained although there are many
on ORBit).

Another point is that some of our students worked on a project of
distributed system graphic monitoring with GNOME and it worked
perfectly well.

-- 
-- Laurent