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,c56a86f3a4e16d06 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" Subject: Re: Containers with Ada Date: 2000/11/21 Message-ID: <3A1AE30E.C57724E8@home.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 696310741 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <8v8pii$dvo$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3A19172D.ACCA08BB@earthlink.net> <3A1AAFDE.1FABDD6B@home.com> X-Accept-Language: en Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: MetroNet Communications Group Inc. MIME-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 14:03:39 MDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-11-21T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Stephen Leake wrote: > "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" writes: > > > Stephen Leake wrote: > > > > > Brian Rogoff writes: > ...snip... > > > Someone looking to create an Ada library should make an attempt to > > > find out what's already been done. Then they can either just use it, > > > or improve on it, or start from scratch. In any case, we'll all learn > > > something (if they tell us :). > > > > There are other factors that must be considered before using an > > EXISTING package: > > > > 1. - Who controls its design and interface? > > 2. - Is it likely to undergo changes in the future? > > 3. - How stable are the various existing releases of this package out there? > > All good points. > > > > > Perhaps a better solution for open source packages is to distribute > exactly the version you test with (which you may have patched), with > the caveat that users who use other versions are on their own. Certainly, that is one solution. For large packages like florist however, distributing that with a small application goes against the grain, especially for the user who downloads with 56k modems. > That's one of the beauties of open source; you can insulate yourself > from all the maintenance issues just by distributing the version of > the source you happened to use. Yes, with the above disadvantage noted. Sometimes, it is possible just to extract the pieces you need. However, that is not always easy, or even advisable. > I would hope you would make an effort to contribute fixes and upgrade > to later versions, but there's really no need to require your users to > do that on their own! > > -- > -- Stephe You don't specifically indicate what I should perform "fixes and upgrade to later versions" for, but I'll assume that you mean my own contributed applications. If so, then yes indeed. However, some balance is required here however. My goal for written applications, is to be the "May Tag repair man". I want to be able to move onto _NEW_ projects, since time is a limited resource. If I must keep revisiting an application that does not need enhancing, just to make it compile and work again, I get rather annoyed (when the change is seemingly unnecessary). It's an imperfect world, so I accept the reality that changes are sometimes required. But IMHO, it should be possible most of the time to build applications without making a career out of it ;-) -- Warren W. Gay VE3WWG http://members.home.net/ve3wwg