Re: GNAT GPL Edition Maintenance and Upgrades

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

Marc A. Criley a écrit :

> (Hmm, this subject seems to have sputtered out, better get some
> gasoline... :-)
>
> I wrote to AdaCore to ask them what their maintenance and upgrade
> intentions were for the GNAT GPL Edition.
>
> I received a quite timely response that said their intent is to "[keep]
> this version roughly in sync with the latest GNAT Pro releases" and "in
> fact the latest GPL edition is more recent than the latest GNAT Pro
> official release, it corresponds to the more recent GNAT Pro Ada 2005 Beta".
>
> Maybe Ludovic should rerun his Debian survey?  Declining to include a
> maintained Ada development environment on a Linux distribution may be
> unwise...

I warned against this on several occasions, and urged respondents to
the survey to take all aspects into consideration.  I also said that
no matter what, GCC in Debian will never be as good as the GNAT GPL
Edition.  Also, packaging GNAT GPL 2005 Edition was my first intention
(per the Debian Ada Policy, which I'm in the process of updating).
This apparently has had little or no effect on the results.

OTOH, I wouldn't want to spend my time on packages that nobody uses.
Also, while the "selfish argument" has no effect on my decision[1],
I am sensitive to the "interoperability argument", which pleads in
favour of GCC.

As a heads-up: I have not yet started the transition, so it is still
time, if you wish, to cast more votes which perhaps will change the
outcome.  My plan is to wait for a month or so.  The gcc_4_1_branch
is due to be created in the coming days or weeks on gcc.gnu.org; I
feel confident that the corresponding Debian package will appear
soon thereafter in unstable or in experimental.  I will start the
transition when this happens.

[1] Quite to the contrary; the more I hear the "selfish argument",
the more I feel inclined to package GNAT GPL Edition, just to teach
selfish people that if they refuse to give, then they cannot take,
as Georg Bauhaus said so nicely.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.