Re: SAL, Auto_Text_IO release

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

M E Leypold said:
> (This release cycles will be my death one day: Another release after
> 1.5 years? Hell, I worked happily with Turbo Pascal 5+6 for years (or
> it only seemed so, I'm not sure any more :-)).

Heh, you're the first one who says Debian's release cycle is too fast
:)

http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060601

Support for Debian 3.0 "Woody" (which includes GNAT 3.14p) is due to
end one year after 3.1 "Sarge" was released. I think "Sarge" will be
similarly supported for some time after "Etch" is released. And if you
pay me, then I can guarantee that :-)

> Well, I know that. I'v only been asking to keep the old versions.
>
> Two points to think about:
>
>   - When we started the project there was no GCC 4.1 and GCC 3.x Ada
>     support was rumored to be bad. So we decided to stick with 3.15p
>     at that time. Call me conservative. I prefer known bugs and
>     weaknesses to new ones.

That was also my policy when I worked on Sarge; at that time GCC 3.3
was already out and was the default C and C++ compiler.

>   - Project is cross-platform: 3.15p came readily packaged and self
>     contained. It will take some time to shift the Windows build
>     machine to gcc 4.1 (if that is even possible yet). That will have
>     to use MINGW (I think?) so this is a larger change from what we
>     had, since that needs to coexists with cygwin.

Yes, all transitions involve work. I should know.

>   - I'm somewhat disinclined to change horses in midrace as it is. So
>     migration to gcc 4.1 (for all builds) will be something which has
>     do be done of a course of months if not years. If a build fails
>     with gccada we'll have to build under 3.15p anyway so retaining
>     3.15p as an insurance (also against wild license changes, you
>     understand ...) is a matter of policy.

That sounds reasonable. At least, now you can plan ahead for the
transition, and you know where to migrate to. You are not "stuck".
Rejoice :)

> But thanks for your explanation anyway.
>
>> If you need all of AdaCore's libraries in GMGPL binary packages, that's
>> one more reason to use Debian or, alternatively, one of GNU Ada's
>> packages. Or roll your own binary packages.
>
> Exactly. Why do you think I _am_ using Debian? :-) I'd like to thank
> you and the Debian team here for the really solid piece of work you're
> doing.

Thanks a lot. Debian is a good development platform, but also a good,
stable deployment (target) platform. Do any of your customers use it?
Do you provide your software in .deb format? Do you use the project
files provided with each library?

> BTW: Is there a bug tracking for gnat 3.15p somewhere? I've found
> various bugs in the runtime and have not reproduced them with newer
> gnats but suppose that they are still here (at least some of them ...).

AdaCore do not make their bug tracker public, but Debian does.  You're
most welcome to use it. GNU Ada uses SourceForge's tracker, but there
are very few bugs in it, all closed.

http://bugs.debian.org/gnat

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.