Re: One united Ada policy for all Linux distributions?

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Tue, 18 May 2010 02:32:40 -0700 (PDT), Ludovic Brenta wrote:

> Further musings on this hypothetical "unified" policy:
> 
> - The policy would have to mandate package names so they are the same
> across distributions.

Yes

> - The policy would have to mandate a minimal set of packages that must
> be provided in all distributions.

Yes
 
> - For this, the policy for package names might conflict with
> distribution-wide policies about package names.  For example, in
> Debian, detached debugging symbols must be in packages with names
> ending with -dbg while Fedora uses -debuginfo instead.  Also the
> Fedora -debuginfo packages must contain the sources while the Debian -
> dbg packages may not.

Naming of the derived packages is IMO of minor importance. It is OK to have
gtkada-dev and gtkada-devel, so long "gtkada" is same.

> - The package names must change when the ALI files change (the Debian
> Policy for Ada explains why in detail; this is not specific to Debian
> but is a consequence of the Ada language definition, so must apply to
> all distributions).

Do you mean version suffix?

> - The release cycles are different for all distributions.  Therefore,
> at any point in time, each distribution would provide a different
> collection of the compiler and of all libraries, using different
> package names.  This may or may not have an impact on user programs
> and compilation commands.

Yes, when using plain gnatmake with -I, -L stuff. (Who cares?)

No, when project files used. The project file names must be invariant. E.g.
gtkada.gpr. Ideally gpr files should be installed where GPS, gprbuild,
gnatmake could look after them. GNAT GPL's GPS does it in
<GNAT-root>/lib/gnat. I think the policy should mandate a directory under
/usr/lib or /usr/include for all gpr files rather than project-dependent
directories.

If we wanted to introduce versioning (coexistence in Debian policy terms?),
we could hang version suffixes on the gpr's directory, rather than on gpr
files. The suffix will follow GNAT releases.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de