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From: David Holm <david@realityrift.com>
Subject: Re: GNAT for Debian
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 10:56:24 GMT
Date: 2003-07-23T10:56:24+00:00	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20030723125549.1336a07f.david@realityrift.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: slrnbhsn4e.hr.randhol+abuse@kiuk0152.chembio.ntnu.no

On Wed, 23 Jul 2003 10:00:00 +0000 (UTC)
Preben Randhol <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote:

> David Holm wrote:
> > But ACT's CVS is updated about every other day, often with changes
> > made to the gcc patch (the ada code is separate from the gcc
> > code-changes).  There are also some alarming threads on the gcc
> > mailinglist where it's made obvious that people (including gcc
> > maintainers) aren't very interested in Ada. This is one such thread:
> > http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2000-10/msg00003.html
> >
> I don't agree with you on that. I didn't have time to read the whole
> thread but after the first dusine posts I didn't get that impression.

It was a bad example, there are better, more recent threads. I just picked the first one I
found.

> > I recon their consider it just another adition to their list of
> > support languages and don't care much more. Personally I use Ada
> > because I know what it can do to an applications stability, therefore
> > I also want it to be maintained by someone who respects that, namely
> > ACT, not GNU.
> 
> It is not GNU that does the development of the Ada part it is ACT.

But GNU decides what to accept from ACTs patches and what not to accept. They do not blindly
apply code that come from ACT. Since ACT is striving for maximum Ada stability it is likely that
when GNU-people remove code they will go further away from that goal or otherwise there would be
no need for separate codebases.

> > I switched from FreeBSD where the Ada maintainer is very strict when
> > it comes to what to add and not to add regarding ada-stuff. I was
> > expecting something similar from Debian since that is the way I found
> > debian to be a few years ago (before I knew Ada). I guess it's
> > problematic to find good maintainers these days though, especially
> > when it comes to Ada. It's not exactly popular (at least in my
> > school), apart from one or two of the doctoral students I seem to be
> > the only one using it.
> 
> Most distributions make gnat compilers from the gcc 3.x brance. So a lot
> of problems would go away if this could come up to speed with ACTs CVS.
> At the moment we are in a limbo between 3.15p and some stable gnat in
> the future. The problem is that a buggy gnat won't make more people
> interested in developing in Ada.

But providing only gcc-3.x based Ada compilers won't make the distribution attractive to
knowledgable Ada developers either. Which was my point. The average Joe who only needs it for a
school assignment won't care which version he uses. Which is why I brought the issue up here,
those of us who know Ada should make sure our distributions do things right. It is just too
common for people to become blinded by version numbers.

> > True, it is not for you then maybe. Perhaps you should take over the
> > position as Ada maintainer in Debian or find someone else motivated to
> > do it. The current maintainer didn't seem motivated to me.
> 
> If others would help it would be nice. I guess one had to consult
> Debian, but making a gnat-3.15p and then gnat-X-act-cvs versions until
> gcc-3 is stable wouldn't be preferable. I agree on this. However I guess
> it would be nice to know also what the roadmap for gcc-3 and ACT are in
> this respect.

From what I have read recently (although I don't follow the gcc-mailinglists much) it seems that
they are more intent on keeping C/C++ etc stable which is likely to impair Ada development since
the ACT patch affecting non-ada stuff is growing.
One day there might be two different branches, ACT who is going for stability and GCC where
people can freely submit patches moving Ada stuff forward at a faster pace. I wouldn't bet my
money on gcc-3 in the near future though. Unless there is a real good reason to use ada from
gcc-3 I will stick with the ordinary gnat releases.

On a sidenote, if you or anyone else is interested in building gnat-3.15p packages I could mail
you the build procedure I'm using in gentoo. I've found it rather difficult to build properly
without lots of extra stuff going on around it. I'm also working on a build process for ACT cvs
snapshots, seems they added more fuss to it which changes the buildprocess somewhat.

//David Holm 



  parent reply	other threads:[~2003-07-23 10:56 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 48+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2003-07-21 18:56 GNAT for Debian Francisco Javier Loma Daza
2003-07-21 19:51 ` Samuel Tardieu
2003-07-22  0:12 ` David Holm
2003-07-22  9:03   ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-22 11:55     ` David Holm
2003-07-22 12:16       ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-22 14:53         ` David Holm
2003-07-23 10:00           ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-23 10:25             ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-23 10:56             ` David Holm [this message]
2003-07-23 11:03               ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-23 11:50                 ` David Holm
2003-07-23 12:14                   ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-23 12:26                     ` David Holm
2003-07-23 12:30                       ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-24  8:50                   ` Chris M. Moore
2003-07-24  9:13                     ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-24  9:14                       ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-24 11:44                       ` Chris M. Moore
2003-07-24 11:47                         ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-24 15:54                           ` Chris M. Moore
2003-07-24 21:12                             ` George Shapovalov
2003-07-24 21:58                               ` Simon Wright
2003-07-25  1:39                                 ` George Shapovalov
2003-07-25  6:41                                   ` Ludovic Brenta
2003-07-25 10:54                                     ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-25 10:59                                       ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-25 10:58                                     ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-25 12:35                                     ` Samuel Tardieu
2003-07-26 10:01                                       ` Ludovic Brenta
2003-07-26 10:12                                         ` Samuel Tardieu
2003-07-26  3:36                                     ` Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
2003-07-26  8:51                                       ` Samuel Tardieu
2003-07-25  6:39                                 ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-25  6:55                                   ` Ludovic Brenta
2003-07-25  6:33                             ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-23 18:09               ` Matthew Woodcraft
2003-07-23 18:40                 ` Ludovic Brenta
2003-07-22  8:05 ` Georg Bauhaus
2003-07-22  9:02 ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-22 14:54   ` Francisco Javier Loma Daza
2003-07-22 15:37     ` Samuel Tardieu
2003-07-23 10:01       ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-23 10:08         ` Samuel Tardieu
2003-07-23 10:49           ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-23 10:58             ` Preben Randhol
2003-07-25 11:41         ` Jérôme Marant
2003-07-25 12:05           ` Ludovic Brenta
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