Re: GNAT GPL 2005 Edition is now available

["Ludovic Brenta" <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

Yes, AdaCore only work on the main line of development in GCC.  Yes,
this means that very few updates are being made to the Ada part of GCC
4.0.  And yes, it is true that the FSF considers Ada not to be a
release criterion for any release of GCC.

That said, I have a history of backporting fixes from the head of GCC
into "The Debian Ada compiler".  I have backported about 20 such fixes
into gnat 3.15p, and I intend to continue doing that for the next
"Debian Ada compiler", whichever that is.  Of course, I do this only
on my spare time, and because I volunteer to do so.  And, of course,
I am only willing to support *one* branch this way; I have not
backported any fixes into either gnat-3.4 or gnat-4.0 yet for this
reason.

So, if GCC 4.0 should be chosen as the next Ada compiler for Debian,
chances are that I'll be able to backport Ada fixes from 4.1 into it.
I make no promises, but at least I'll try if my time allows.

I am not a fan of "the latest version at all costs".  I prefer to
choose a stable branch such as 3.4 or 4.0, and selectively backport
fixes in order to improve *stability* and *correctness*.

Anyone is free to join the GCC team and backport Ada fixes from HEAD
to the active release branches (currently 3.4 and 4.0).  There are
criteria for which patches are acceptable in a release branch.  Such
patches are automatically picked up by Debian, as Debian uses the
weekly snapshots of the release branches.

Anyone is free to join Debian and contribute patches.  Debian has
many patches applied to its compilers (and kernels, and glibc, and
binutils for that matter).

Debian has chosen GCC 4.0 as its system C and C++ compiler for Etch.
I think it would be perverse to choose GCC 4.1 as the Ada system
compiler.  That is why I did not consider 4.1 as a contender, even
though 4.1 may be released before Etch.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.