From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,d275ffeffdf83655 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: john@assen.demon.co.uk.nospam (John McCabe) Subject: Re: EMACS Ada Mode Maintenance Date: 1999/02/05 Message-ID: <36b9f769.3385631@news.demon.co.uk>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 441069227 X-NNTP-Posting-Host: assen.demon.co.uk:158.152.218.101 References: <78kk11$qmd$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <78ks1t$253$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36affcb4.14065782@news.geccs.gecm.com> <36B1F27A.6762@gecm.com> <78tm5g$kb1$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <36b7695a.2630918@news.geccs.gecm.com> <873e4oqtz1.fsf@mihalis.ix.netcom.com> <36b89f98.2045516@news.demon.co.uk> <874sp34287.fsf@mihalis.ix.netcom.com> <36B9DA0A.40D0@gecm.com> <79c9b2$h3j$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 918238328 nnrp-04:29278 NO-IDENT assen.demon.co.uk:158.152.218.101 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net Date: 1999-02-05T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: dewar@gnat.com wrote: >This is to announce that Richard Stallman has formally >designated Emmanuel Briot as the official maintainer >of Ada mode for EMACS. Glad to hear that this decision has finally been made. >Emmanuel Briot is an employee of Ada Core Technologies, >but will be doing this work with a GNU hat on, won't he look a bit silly :-) >and of course all work will be assigned to >the Free Software Foundation. Ada Core Technologies is >happy to make this contribution of effort to the continued >development of GNU software. I'd like to thank ACT for assigning their resources to the development of ada-mode. >With regard to recent discussions on this newsgroup, >Richard Stallman's view is that it is proper to give >precedence to GNAT in the development of this facility, >since "GNU programs should generally give preference to >other free software, and especially to other GNU software." Although I would stand by such a statement, mainly with respect to new features, there is a subtlety in this quote in that it doesn't state anywhere that general features of currently available GNU software should be removed and replaced with product specific code (I refer in particular of course to the use of gnatstub in ada-make-body). Rather it seems the norm for additional (alternative/improved) functionality that uses external tools etc to be added which can be selected through customisation options etc, in order to allow users without those tools to still have the functionality they already had. In actal fact, Rolf Ebert (previous maintainer of ada-mode) once stated that he had hesitated to put ada-xref.el (which was always very GNAT specific) into Emacs because of this. >The policy here will be to include all useful >contributions, and to provide facilities that are generally >useful. Certainly there will be no deliberate attempt to >impede the use of EMACS with Ada compilers other than GNAT, >no one suggests that would be reasonable, so we expect that >many of the facilities of Ada mode in EMACS will continue >to be usable by other compilers. However, in accordance >with the direction requested by Richard Stallman, providing >special functionality for use with compilers other than >GNAT will not be a priority in our continued development >effort. Of course I would not expect you to provide functionality for other compilers, only customisation support to allow the GNAT commands to be easily changed for other compilers. All I really ask is that ada-mode.el should at least provide the functionality it always did without requiring additional packages, that the ability be included to extend the functionality through such additional packages (e.g through gnat-mode for example, and that any language specific (rather than compiler) enhancements be put into ada-mode.el. >We will rejuvenate and maintain the EMACS Ada mode mailing >list, and we will make an announcement here concerning that >list in the near future. We suggest that further >discussions of technical details for Ada mode can most >fruitfully be held on that mailing list. Excellent. Best Regards John McCabe