Re: The GNU Ada compiler

[Martin Krischik <krischik@users.sourceforge.net>]

Ludovic Brenta wrote:

> Adrian Knoth <adi@thur.de> writes:
>> Martin Krischik <krischik@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>>
>>>> Do your packages for Suse replace the Gnat packages that Suse
>>>> provides, or can they coexist?
>>> I never ever would replace the SuSE packages - you need them to
>>> compile the kernel!
>>
>> I think this is not the answer to the same question which arose for
>> me yesterday: if the distribution ships a gnat package, why would
>> one use yours?
> 
> Yes, and another question: do your packages include all the
> distribution-specific patches, which are often necessary to compile
> the kernel or glibc?

No:

cat /etc/profile.d/ada.bash
if [[ (${USER} != root) && (-z ${_ada_bash_} ) ]] ; then

I keep the original compiler for root to use.

> I appreciate your efforts, but my gut feeling is that they are not
> very productive; it would be more worthwhile, IMHO, to just join the
> existing maintenance teams of GCC in your distribution of choice, and
> provide patches to their build scripts or to the compiler itself as
> necessary.  This way, the default GNAT shipped by your distribution
> would retain the ability to compile the kernel and glibc, and also
> have good Ada and good multi-language support.

Before SuSE 10 this was no option at all. Up until then SuSE used gcc 3.3.x.
And we know that Ada in gcc only became usable *again* with 3.4.x.

With SuSE 10 they jumped right to 4.0.2 - and a prerelease snapshot on top.
I am unsure if 4.0.2 is a good release either since AdaCore used 3.4.x as
basis for GNAT/Pro and GNAT/GPL.

> I would like to add that, in 2001, I switched from Red Hat to Debian
> for precisely two reasons: no Ada support in Red Hat 8, and no
> possibility that I could influence them.  And now, I do much more than
> influence Ada in Debian :)

But we would not want that Ada is only available to debian. That would leat
to lots of FUD.

Martin
-- 
mailto://krischik@users.sourceforge.net
Ada programming at: http://ada.krischik.com