On Tue, 14 Apr 2026 09:39:28 -0400 (EDT)
Wietse Venema via Postfix-users <[email protected]> wrote:

> The comparison of ADA with a space shuttle is an apt one. However,
> I would prefer a more modern language such as Go which has first-party
> library support for much of today's networking. With Postfix I
> avoided the horse-drawn cart problem with an abstraction layer that
> takes up almost 50% of the code. qmail, a contemporary of Postfix,
> did a similar thing.

If I'm not mistaken you may be referring to the files under Postfix
src/util which provide various abstraction layers? I faced similar
challenges, one of my hobbies is documenting bare metal programming for
obsolete architectures like SPARC V9:
https://cryintothebluesky.blogspot.com/2025/10/sparc-v9-boot-process-part-1-bootblk.html
https://cryintothebluesky.blogspot.com/2026/03/sparc-v9-boot-process-part-2-sysboot.html

Building a freestanding GCC cross-compiler is relatively simple, but I
prefer not to bring in open-source libc implementations since POSIX
compliance isn’t necessary for my use case. Instead, I’m progressively
developing my own routines for memory management, string manipulation,
and a range of fundamental algorithms and data structures. Without
these abstractions, programming in a freestanding C environment becomes
quite tedious.

This is where Ada really shines. With a supported runtime, such as the
Ravenscar Profile or Jorvik Profile, you effectively get a lightweight
RTOS built into the language itself. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem
to be a runtime available for SPARC V9 yet.
_______________________________________________
Postfix-users mailing list -- [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]

Reply via email to