* Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? @ 1996-06-12 0:00 Mike Ibarra 1996-06-12 0:00 ` Robert Dewar ` (7 more replies) 0 siblings, 8 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Mike Ibarra @ 1996-06-12 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In my brief experience with this Ada95 Compiler, it seems that it expects certain file formats. Are physical files limited to one compilation unit per file? It doesn't seem to like it when there is a spec, body and proc all in the same physical file. Is there a way around this? Also on user defined inherited packages, i.e., PACKAGE mypack.childpack.newpack IS, The compiler seems to expect the physical file name to match the actual package name. Is this true as well, or is there any way around this? Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance, -- Mike Ibarra ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-12 0:00 Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? Mike Ibarra @ 1996-06-12 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-12 0:00 ` Samuel Tardieu ` (6 subsequent siblings) 7 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-06-12 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Mike said " The compiler seems to expect the physical file name to match the actual package name. Is this true as well, or is there any way around this? Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance," The answers to these questions may be found in the GNAT documentation. Make sure yu read files gnatinfo.txt and features, which are part of all GNAT distributions. The answer is that the default is that the file names must match, but you can override this with configuration pragmas. There is a requirement for one unit per file, but see the GNATCHOP utility ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-12 0:00 Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? Mike Ibarra 1996-06-12 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1996-06-12 0:00 ` Samuel Tardieu 1996-06-12 0:00 ` Peter Hermann ` (5 subsequent siblings) 7 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Samuel Tardieu @ 1996-06-12 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Mike Ibarra >>>>> "Mike" == Mike Ibarra <ibarra@mccabe.com> writes: Mike> In my brief experience with this Ada95 Compiler, it seems that Mike> it expects certain file formats. Are physical files limited to Mike> one compilation unit per file? It doesn't seem to like it when Mike> there is a spec, body and proc all in the same physical file. Mike> Is there a way around this? Mike> Also on user defined inherited packages, i.e., PACKAGE Mike> mypack.childpack.newpack IS, Mike> The compiler seems to expect the physical file name to match the Mike> actual package name. Is this true as well, or is there any way Mike> around this? First of all, you're using a very very very old version of GNAT. The current one (3.05) is available by anonymous FTP on ftp.cs.nyu.edu in directory /pub/gnat. GNAT is source based, this means that it doesn't keep any information into a private library but needs the source files to retrieve the information. This is why it needs to know where it can find the files. Starting from GNAT 3.03 (or 3.01, I don't remember), you can use a file called gnat.adc which contains pragma to map a unit name onto a file name. GNAT doesn't support AFAIK multiple units in a single file. You may use 'gnatchop' on every file you have to generate the right file name. The best thing to do IMHO is to download the latest GNAT version and read the gnatinfo.txt file which comes with the distribution. Sam -- "La cervelle des petits enfants, ca doit avoir comme un petit gout de noisette" Charles Baudelaire ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-12 0:00 Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? Mike Ibarra 1996-06-12 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-12 0:00 ` Samuel Tardieu @ 1996-06-12 0:00 ` Peter Hermann 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Ronald Cole ` (4 subsequent siblings) 7 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Peter Hermann @ 1996-06-12 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Mike Ibarra (ibarra@mccabe.com) wrote: [snipp!] Mike, please, please don't come with such very old versions of GNAT. "Nowadays" ;-) we are at least at GNAT version 3.04 and nobody will even read your question. I skipped it, too, as a result of reading the subject line. I beg your pardon ;-) -- Peter Hermann Tel:+49-711-685-3611 Fax:3758 ph@csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de Pfaffenwaldring 27, 70569 Stuttgart Uni Computeranwendungen Team Ada: "C'mon people let the world begin" (Paul McCartney) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-12 0:00 Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? Mike Ibarra ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 1996-06-12 0:00 ` Peter Hermann @ 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-15 0:00 ` James E. Hopper ` (2 more replies) 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Ronald Cole ` (3 subsequent siblings) 7 siblings, 3 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-15 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <4pmn1p$360c@info4.rus.uni-stuttgart.de> ucaa2385@alpha1.csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de (Peter Hermann) writes: Mike, please, please don't come with such very old versions of GNAT. "Nowadays" ;-) we are at least at GNAT version 3.04 and nobody will even read your question. I skipped it, too, as a result of reading the subject line. I beg your pardon ;-) I often wonder why people want to use GNAT at all for anything serious... After all, the current release will be an old, stale, dysfunctional piece of shit and completely disowned by Robert Dewar immediately after the next release! (or so he keeps telling the bloke who keeps producing the Ada CD-ROM set a version or two behind...) -- Ronald Cole E-mail: ronald@ridgecrest.ca.us President, CEO zippy@ecst.csuchico.edu Forte International Fax: (619) 384-2346 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-15 0:00 ` James E. Hopper 1996-06-21 0:00 ` Ronald Cole ` (5 more replies) 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 6 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: James E. Hopper @ 1996-06-15 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <m24todol3x.fsf@devo.ridgecrest.ca.us> Ronald Cole, ronald@ridgecrest.ca.us writes: >I often wonder why people want to use GNAT at all for anything >serious... After all, the current release will be an old, stale, >dysfunctional piece of shit and completely disowned by Robert Dewar >immediately after the next release! (or so he keeps telling the bloke >who keeps producing the Ada CD-ROM set a version or two behind...) > lets get real if he said that about 3.03 or 3.04 ok, but 2.06 is something like a year old! its real simple actually i just take each release source and build it for my mac. i pulled down 3.05 source last tues i think and had 3.05 running on my powermac the next day! its really quite simple ;-) Ok so it requires more knowledge than that but anyone can download the binaries for the supported architectures from the nyu ftp site. i can't imagine anyone doing serious development without internet access. even on the mac commercial compilers like codewarrior or MPW without internet access you are dooming yourself to running versions with bugs etc that have long been fixed. I suspect ACT's answer to people with support contracts is considerably different than people wanting free support for a compiler thats been long fixed. its one thing to offer free support on something that only requires you to use whats on your machine its another thing again to ask for someone for free to dig up year old archives and help you debug your problem. I have gotten much better support from ACT in our projects than i EVER got from verdix/Rational despite some truly monumental support payments! jim ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-15 0:00 ` James E. Hopper @ 1996-06-21 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-22 0:00 ` George Tracey 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Ronald Cole ` (4 subsequent siblings) 5 siblings, 2 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-21 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes: > A new edition of the Walnut Creek CD ROM is in production as we speak > and will be out in July. It will contain GNAT 3.05. I too have no > commercial interest in the CD ROM. I recommend it based > on personal experience with the previous releases, and with the > enthusiasm and dedication of Rick Conn of Monomuth University, who > administers the PAL and organizes the files for the CD ROM. It is > overall a nice cooperation among many providers, and IMHO is well > worth the $39.95 it costs (for a 2 CD set). Walnut Creek also has > a subscription arrangement. Too late... Robert has already declared that 3.05 is a piece of shit and 3.06 will be here next week. If Walnut Creek were a respectable company, they would scrap all their current 3.05 CDs and immediately repress them when 3.06 comes out... I wonder if Robert has arranged to get a kick-back on the subscription arrangement... It seems that he's turning out substandard GNAT releases every few weeks now (instead of every month or so, like the good old days). -- Ronald Cole E-mail: ronald@ridgecrest.ca.us President, CEO zippy@ecst.csuchico.edu Forte International Fax: (619) 384-2346 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-21 0:00 ` Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-22 0:00 ` George Tracey 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1 sibling, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: George Tracey @ 1996-06-22 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article: <m23f3p3vtg.fsf@devo.ridgecrest.ca.us> Ronald Cole <ronald@devo.ridgecrest.ca.us> writes: > ... 3.05 is a piece of shit The only excrement I have come across in comp.lang.ada is that written by Ronald Cole. By virtue of the efforts of Robert Dewar and others, a quality product is continually refined and improved and made freely available. Those involved in the production and distribution of such products deserve our thanks and should not have to be subject to the demented outpourings of embittered individuals such as Ronald Cole George Tracey ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-21 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-22 0:00 ` George Tracey @ 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-27 0:00 ` Peter Hermann 1996-06-28 0:00 ` Fergus Henderson 1 sibling, 2 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-06-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole said: Too late... Robert has already declared that 3.05 is a piece of shit and 3.06 will be here next week. If Walnut Creek were a respectable company, they would scrap all their current 3.05 CDs and immediately repress them when 3.06 comes out... I guess Ronald did not read my message carefully (not too surprising :-) In fact 3.05 is a big improvement on 3.04, and it was precisely to catch the Walnut Creek release that we put out 3.05, and the vast majority of GNAT users, including likely nearly all those getting GNAT from the CD ROM will be completely unaffected by the performance problem. Even in the case of serious production use of GNAT, most users will be unaffected by the performance issue in GNAT. As I described in my earlier message, the change we made in this area did indeed fix a functional bug, but it fixed it at the cost of performance for a certain class of programs (those that pass large records, as opposed to pointers to records). There is no comletely clean fix to this problem, given that we would like to use the C convention as the default for Ada. It just turns out that Ada programmers are much more likely than C programmers to pass large records. Note that in particular, if 3.05 is a "piece of shit" because of this behavior, then *all* C compilers are also a "piece of shit", since the ANSI C standard *requires* the worrisome behavior (copying all records when they are passed as value parameters). As I described in my previous note, this is enough of a peformance problem for a certain small fraction of Ada programs (e.g. those using bounded strings and passing them by value), that for 3.06 we have decided to abandon the absolute guarantee of Ada-C callings sequence compatibility by default for this particular case. There is certainly no point in Walnut Creek worrying about waiting for 3.06, and we already discussed this point. The only reason we are putting out a 3.06 fairly soon is to address the needs of what turns out to be a rather small number of affected users. Indeed, perhaps my original message was too arlamist, since only a small handful of users have noticed the performance problem (which can show up either as increased stack usage, or increased execution time), and we could have simply dealt with these users individually, but it seemed appropriate to send out a warning, even if it is helpful only to a small number of people. Ronald Cole said "I wonder if Robert has arranged to get a kick-back on the subscription arrangement... It seems that he's turning out substandard GNAT releases every few weeks now (instead of every month or so, like the good old days)." Well I am not sure Ronald increases his credibility with such accusations, and they probably do not even need answering, but just to prevent any possible confusions (new readers of newsgroups are not always familiar with the colorful characters inhabiting comp.lang.ada), of course neither I nor ACT get any kick back or royalty of any kind from Walnut Creek. On the contrary, we contribute our time to work with them to synchronize releases. Furthermore, Walnut Creek charges a very modest fee for this CD ROM, hardly enough to accomodate kick backs :-) I am certainly happy to recommend the Walnut Creek CD ROM to Ada users, they do an excellent job of updating it frequently, and we always have good interactions with that operation in terms of planning release schedules. So if you are looking for GNAT on CD ROM, this is definitely the best choice. If you get the latest CD ROM from Walnut Creek, you may not be absolutely at the latest release of GNAT. The only way to achieve that is FTP. But you will be very close to the latest. Current plans are as follows. SGI will ship the equivalent of 3.05 as their new manufacturing release, but with a patch to deal with the record passing problem (basically they will return to 3.04 behavior for this particular problem). They will number that release 3.06. To avoid any confusions, we will skip 3.06 at ACT and our next release which fixes the record problem, and contains other new features and fixes, including the new handling of generic messages, will be called 3.07 (we are reserving the move to 4.xx for the point when we validate against ACVC 2.0.1 on at least one target). We will start the normal release cycle on this version soon (which means about two weeks of customer testing, then the public release). For anyone running into the performance problem on 3.05, the work around is the same as it would be in C, pass a pointer to the record instead of the record itself. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1996-06-27 0:00 ` Peter Hermann 1996-06-28 0:00 ` Fergus Henderson 1 sibling, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Peter Hermann @ 1996-06-27 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Robert Dewar (dewar@cs.nyu.edu) wrote: : strings and passing them by value), that for 3.06 we have decided to abandon : the absolute guarantee of Ada-C callings sequence compatibility by default : for this particular case. this is justified, imho. At interfaces fortran/ada or c/ada I would restrict myself to the standard types offered in the packages interfaces.<language> if ever possible. -- Peter Hermann Tel:+49-711-685-3611 Fax:3758 ph@csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de Pfaffenwaldring 27, 70569 Stuttgart Uni Computeranwendungen Team Ada: "C'mon people let the world begin" (Paul McCartney) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-27 0:00 ` Peter Hermann @ 1996-06-28 0:00 ` Fergus Henderson 1 sibling, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Fergus Henderson @ 1996-06-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) I have no sympathy for Ronald Cole's position in this thread. But I want to pick a nit with one comment that Robert Dewar made. dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: >Note that in particular, if 3.05 is a "piece of shit" because of this >behavior, then *all* C compilers are also a "piece of shit", since the >ANSI C standard *requires* the worrisome behavior (copying all records >when they are passed as value parameters). That's not correct. The ANSI/ISO C standard dictates behaviour, not implementation. C implementations can implement pass-by-value by passing a pointer and then making a copy in the callee if and only if the address of the struct is taken or the struct is modified. -- Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au> | "I have always known that the pursuit WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh> | of excellence is a lethal habit" PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3 | -- the last words of T. S. Garp. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-15 0:00 ` James E. Hopper 1996-06-21 0:00 ` Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-24 0:00 ` Ronald Cole ` (3 subsequent siblings) 5 siblings, 1 reply; 27+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) George Tracey <george@compsol.demon.co.uk> writes: > The only excrement I have come across in comp.lang.ada is that written > by Ronald Cole. If you had been followed along, you will see that I am parroting Robert's sentiments about non-current releases, hoping that he will change them. Search backwards and you'll find the post with my explanation. (I'm heartened by the supportive email I've received from that post.) -- Ronald Cole E-mail: ronald@ridgecrest.ca.us President, CEO zippy@ecst.csuchico.edu Forte International Fax: (619) 384-2346 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-06-23 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole said "If you had been followed along, you will see that I am parroting Robert's sentiments about non-current releases, hoping that he will change them." Gosh, I hope I never own a parrot like that, I thought they were supposed to repeat what you said without *too much* distortion :-) Anway, for the record, here is ACT's sentiments about non-current releases. FOr supported users, we provide routinely support for up to a year after any particular release is first provided. If a customer wants to stay with a particular release rather than updating, we can certainly accomdoate this. For projects that want to base line and use the same release for a longer period, we can provide this service too, but that requires a special long term agreement. For non-supported users, generally we will only support the most recent release, and of course even that support is at low priority, with no guaranteed response time. I am afraid that Ronald will not change our sentiments on this, unless of course he wants to become a paying customer, and then he may use all the old releases he wants, and we will provide support! Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-15 0:00 ` James E. Hopper 1996-06-21 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-24 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-25 0:00 ` Free support for old Gnat versions (was: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format????) Theodore E. Dennison ` (2 subsequent siblings) 5 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-24 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > For non-supported users, generally we will only support the most > recent release, and of course even that support is at low priority, with > no guaranteed response time. Tell me, Robert, how you support non-supported users! Of course, you mean people who don't pay for ACT support... I don't think people have forgotten that GNAT is GNU software... > I am afraid that Ronald will not change our sentiments on this, unless > of course he wants to become a paying customer, and then he may use > all the old releases he wants, and we will provide support! ...which probably explains why the request for help was made to the group in general, and not specifically to ACT. Or has comp.lang.ada become ACT's commercial forum? -- Ronald Cole E-mail: ronald@ridgecrest.ca.us President, CEO zippy@ecst.csuchico.edu Forte International Fax: (619) 384-2346 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Free support for old Gnat versions (was: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format????) 1996-06-15 0:00 ` James E. Hopper ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 1996-06-24 0:00 ` Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-25 0:00 ` Theodore E. Dennison 1996-06-25 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-28 0:00 ` Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? Ronald Cole 5 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Theodore E. Dennison @ 1996-06-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole wrote: > > dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > > For non-supported users, generally we will only support the most > > recent release, and of course even that support is at low priority, with > > no guaranteed response time. > > Tell me, Robert, how you support non-supported users! Of course, you > mean people who don't pay for ACT support... I don't think people > have forgotten that GNAT is GNU software... Who says he HAS to give ANY support to non-paying customers? I'd like to see you try that trick on Alsys. Perhaps Robert has misled you a bit by being so helpful here. But I don't ever recall him or anyone else at ACT stating that they were devoting their lives to charity. Last I heard the folks at ACT all had families to feed (or at least themselves). -- T.E.D. | Work - mailto:dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com | | Home - mailto:dennison@iag.net | | URL - http://www.iag.net/~dennison | ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Free support for old Gnat versions (was: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format????) 1996-06-15 0:00 ` James E. Hopper ` (3 preceding siblings ...) 1996-06-25 0:00 ` Free support for old Gnat versions (was: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format????) Theodore E. Dennison @ 1996-06-25 0:00 ` Ronald Cole [not found] ` <31D1368D.167EB0E7@escmail.orl.mmc.com> 1996-06-28 0:00 ` Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? Ronald Cole 5 siblings, 1 reply; 27+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-25 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) "Theodore E. Dennison" <dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com> writes: > Who says he HAS to give ANY support to non-paying customers? I'd like to see > you try that trick on Alsys. Robert said. > Perhaps Robert has misled you a bit by being so helpful here. But I don't ever > recall him or anyone else at ACT stating that they were devoting their lives to > charity. Last I heard the folks at ACT all had families to feed (or at least > themselves). Please go back and read the thread before you rant further. -- Ronald Cole E-mail: ronald@ridgecrest.ca.us President, CEO zippy@ecst.csuchico.edu Forte International Fax: (619) 384-2346 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
[parent not found: <31D1368D.167EB0E7@escmail.orl.mmc.com>]
* Re: Free support for old Gnat versions (was: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format????) [not found] ` <31D1368D.167EB0E7@escmail.orl.mmc.com> @ 1996-06-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-06-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) T.E.D. said "Actually, the above rant was entirely mine. Robert had nothing to do with it (un less he has been performing mind control techniques)." Hmmm! I may be able to do various things, but controlling what people post on CLA is definitely not one of them :-) However, I must say I would not agree with T.E.D.'s characterization of his previous post as a "rant", it seemed reasonable to me :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-15 0:00 ` James E. Hopper ` (4 preceding siblings ...) 1996-06-25 0:00 ` Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-28 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 5 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > I guess Ronald did not read my message carefully (not too surprising :-) Robert, you clearly couldn't recognize rhetoric if it came up and bit you in the Assert(x)! -- Ronald Cole E-mail: ronald@ridgecrest.ca.us President, CEO zippy@ecst.csuchico.edu Forte International Fax: (619) 384-2346 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-15 0:00 ` James E. Hopper @ 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Brian Rogoff @ 1996-06-15 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) ronald@ridgecrest.ca.us (Ronald Cole) writes: You missed the point. Robert can be a bull in a china shop. If Robert would say, "We don't have the manpower to maintain old releases, please download and try the lastest release" or ask the bloke who releases the CDROMs to include a pointer to the latest releases on the internet and let that be that, then a lot of people wouldn't have ruffled feathers. It is pretty easy to miss that point when it wasn't even in your original post, which attacked GNAT, not Robert Dewar! I've appended it to this message to remind you... In any case, I really like GNAT, and would never have learned Ada if it didn't exist. I have reported bugs and received prompt confirmation (from R. Dewar no less!), and estimates of when the bug would be fixed. All free! Gruff? Maybe. Effective? Definitely! -- Brian > I often wonder why people want to use GNAT at all for anything > serious... After all, the current release will be an old, stale, > dysfunctional piece of shit and completely disowned by Robert Dewar > immediately after the next release! (or so he keeps telling the bloke > who keeps producing the Ada CD-ROM set a version or two behind...) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-15 0:00 ` James E. Hopper 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff @ 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-06-15 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald Cole said "I often wonder why people want to use GNAT at all for anything serious... After all, the current release will be an old, stale, dysfunctional piece of shit and completely disowned by Robert Dewar immediately after the next release! (or so he keeps telling the bloke who keeps producing the Ada CD-ROM set a version or two behind...)" First of all, the particular issue here was the use of GNAT 2.06 which is ten versions back, and *really* out of date, and by comparison with the current versions, so far back as to not be worth the effort, remember that unlike many other software products, the update charge is $0, so there is really no reason to be that far back. As far as the CD-ROM set goes, the constant advertisement we see for this "ADA CD-ROM Set" is always for a very out of date version, and by comparison you will do much better to go with Walnut Creak, who, at very reasonable prices, keeps a much more up to date product. Finally, for unsupported users, we generally expect people to make the effort of getting the latest version, given it is free. If on the other hand, you are a customer of ACT, then we can perfectly well accomodate you baselining on earlier versions of the compiler, and by no means disown previous versions. It is just that this base lining support of older versions is not something we provide for free. People who want to use GNAT for "anything serious" should either get support, or be prepared to provide their own support. They should not expect free support for old versions, or for that matter for the current version. ACT continues to provide freely available versions of GNAT, but does NOT provide free support! People often compare what they can get for free with GNAT with what they can get by paying $$$ to a proprietary vendor. That's really an apples and oranges comparison! Either compare what you can get for free from GNAT and the proprietary vendor, or compare what you can get (includin support that you can contract for) by paying whatever. At ACT, we generally have two recommendations to customers. First, only choose GNAT if it is the best tool for the job, and if the support you can get meets your support requirements. Don't choose on the basis of price alone if you have a mission critical project. Of course the fact that GNAT is free to obtain means that you can spend your resources on support (the cost of many proprietary compiler systems will pay not only for a standard support contract with ACT, but will allow you to work out a partnership support agreement, with onsite consulting, where we work with you to guarantee success). Second, we do not recommend the use of free unsupported software for any serious task. This is not just a matter of wanting to sell our support services (which of course we do), but more that we do not want to see people trying to use GNAT and failing, that does no one any good, and using unsupported software definitely increases risks. It is not just a matter of running into blocking bugs, but just in general running into roaldblocks that you may need help in removing. Quite often, super high priority blocking bugs turn out to be errors in customer's code that we have been successful in helping to sort out, which is part of working together, and is part of our model of support. Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-12 0:00 Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? Mike Ibarra ` (3 preceding siblings ...) 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-16 0:00 ` Ronald Cole ` (2 subsequent siblings) 7 siblings, 1 reply; 27+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-15 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) You missed the point. Robert can be a bull in a china shop. If Robert would say, "We don't have the manpower to maintain old releases, please download and try the lastest release" or ask the bloke who releases the CDROMs to include a pointer to the latest releases on the internet and let that be that, then a lot of people wouldn't have ruffled feathers. -- Ronald Cole E-mail: ronald@ridgecrest.ca.us President, CEO zippy@ecst.csuchico.edu Forte International Fax: (619) 384-2346 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-20 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 0 siblings, 1 reply; 27+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-06-15 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) i"You missed the point. Robert can be a bull in a china shop. If Robert would say, "We don't have the manpower to maintain old releases, please download and try the lastest release" or ask the bloke who releases the CDROMs to include a pointer to the latest releases on the internet and let that be that, then a lot of people wouldn't have ruffled feathers." It is not a matter of person power, it is just that we do not choose to provide free maintenance services for old versions. It seems reasonable for people using GNAT to make a little bit of an effort to get the latest version when it is so easy and inexpensive to do so, rather than asking questions about obsolete versions. As for the CDROM, I have sent mucho messages to the "bloke who releases the CDROMs", and never got an answer! As I say, I think you do much better to get the Walnut Creek CD ROM which is much more up to date -- I have no commercial interest in either of these CD ROM's, I *do* have an interest in people not getting stuck with obsolete junk when for the same price they can get something much better! ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1996-06-20 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 0 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Michael Feldman @ 1996-06-20 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <dewar.834880512@schonberg>, Robert Dewar <dewar@cs.nyu.edu> wrote: >As for the CDROM, I have sent mucho messages to the "bloke who releases >the CDROMs", and never got an answer! Me too. I don't even bother anymore. Any advertiser too sleazy to answer questions is, IMHO, not worth a second look. >As I say, I think you do much better >to get the Walnut Creek CD ROM which is much more up to date -- I have >no commercial interest in either of these CD ROM's, I *do* have an interest >in people not getting stuck with obsolete junk when for the same price >they can get something much better! I speak here for nobody but myself.:-) A new edition of the Walnut Creek CD ROM is in production as we speak and will be out in July. It will contain GNAT 3.05. I too have no commercial interest in the CD ROM. I recommend it based on personal experience with the previous releases, and with the enthusiasm and dedication of Rick Conn of Monomuth University, who administers the PAL and organizes the files for the CD ROM. It is overall a nice cooperation among many providers, and IMHO is well worth the $39.95 it costs (for a 2 CD set). Walnut Creek also has a subscription arrangement. That said, I think it's easier to keep up with _GNAT_ by ftp, if you have ftp access. It is inevitable that by the time a CD ROM is produced and put in the sales stream, GNAT will at times have moved to a newer release. In a sense, your GNAT release on a CD is obsolete the day you get it. GNAT is a damn fine piece of work but is still evolving, so it is sensible to keep up with the releases, and - given the frequency of releases every couple of months or so - this is best done by ftp. Mike Feldman ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-12 0:00 Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? Mike Ibarra ` (4 preceding siblings ...) 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-16 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-17 0:00 ` Jim Kingdon 1996-06-19 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 7 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <ROGOFF.96Jun15134546@sccm.Stanford.EDU> rogoff@sccm.Stanford.EDU (Brian Rogoff) writes: It is pretty easy to miss that point when it wasn't even in your original post, which attacked GNAT, not Robert Dewar! I've appended it to this message to remind you... Thank you. I was just restating a theme from a sample of Robert's postings. If you've been reading c.l.a posts for the past few months, you will have personally seen Robert piss off a competent programmer and then thoroughly chastize the guy who publishes the Ada CD-ROMs for not publishing the latest and greatest version of GNAT (Robert's assumption being that all previous releases are somehow unsuitable for use: of course the current release will be a previous release in the near future). Personally, I think GNAT is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I also think that Robert is very sensitive about the quality of his code. Sometimes this sensitivity comes off as arrogance, other times as disparagement. Stallman has a similar personality quirk. I personally have a hard time getting along/working with this kind of personality. I quit contributing to the GNU project several years ago because I got tired of banging my head against the "wall" (Ron Guilmette and I worked out COFF support for g++ as early as version 1.32, but my name was eventually removed from the documentation). My post was in exasperation at the sentiments expressed. -- Ronald Cole E-mail: ronald@ridgecrest.ca.us President, CEO zippy@ecst.csuchico.edu Forte International Fax: (619) 384-2346 My PGP fingerprint: E9 A8 E3 68 61 88 EF 43 56 2B CE 3E E9 8F 3F 2B ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-12 0:00 Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? Mike Ibarra ` (5 preceding siblings ...) 1996-06-16 0:00 ` Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-17 0:00 ` Jim Kingdon 1996-06-19 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 7 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Jim Kingdon @ 1996-06-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) > I personally have a hard time getting along/working with this kind of > personality. I quit contributing to the GNU project several years ago GNU is not the only free software project which has (at times) been plagued by conflict among the contributors. *BSD has also had at least its share. In my opinion, although personalities are one of the easiest things to point to, the structures and policies (written and unwritten) of the project have more to do with the existence and severity of problems. In the case of CVS, I (and others) have put significant effort into preventing and mitigating conflicts, and IMHO we've been fairly successful (so far; our current structure is a young one). It will be interesting to see what happens to GNAT as ACT matures and adjusts to its customer-funded rather than DARPA-funded role. Certainly during the time I was at Cygnus my thinking on these issues evolved, and probably the thinking of other people at Cygnus did too. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-12 0:00 Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? Mike Ibarra ` (6 preceding siblings ...) 1996-06-17 0:00 ` Jim Kingdon @ 1996-06-19 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-20 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 7 siblings, 1 reply; 27+ messages in thread From: Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-19 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Once again missed the forest for the trees. Robert, if you're not anything else, you're consistent... ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
* Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? 1996-06-19 0:00 ` Ronald Cole @ 1996-06-20 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 27+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-06-20 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ronald said "Once again missed the forest for the trees. Robert, if you're not anything else, you're consistent..." Sorry, I have not the foggiest idea what you are talking about, please include a bit more context in your messages! ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 27+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1996-06-28 0:00 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 27+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 1996-06-12 0:00 Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? Mike Ibarra 1996-06-12 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-12 0:00 ` Samuel Tardieu 1996-06-12 0:00 ` Peter Hermann 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-15 0:00 ` James E. Hopper 1996-06-21 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-22 0:00 ` George Tracey 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-27 0:00 ` Peter Hermann 1996-06-28 0:00 ` Fergus Henderson 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-23 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-24 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-25 0:00 ` Free support for old Gnat versions (was: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format????) Theodore E. Dennison 1996-06-25 0:00 ` Ronald Cole [not found] ` <31D1368D.167EB0E7@escmail.orl.mmc.com> 1996-06-28 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-28 0:00 ` Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format???? Ronald Cole 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-15 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-06-20 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-06-16 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-17 0:00 ` Jim Kingdon 1996-06-19 0:00 ` Ronald Cole 1996-06-20 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
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