Re: Rant! (was) Development process in the Ada community

[Michael Erdmann <Michael.Erdmann@snafu.de>]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> "Michael Erdmann" <Michael.Erdmann@snafu.de> wrote in message
> news:3CB9AF3C.8030301@snafu.de...
> 
>>Did they manage to get this into an Appendix of the Ada 95 RM, or
>>did they succeed with there container packages?
>>
>>
> Getting any sufficiently complex library into an appendix of the ARM would
> be very difficult and problematic. You would need to formally specify the
> behavior and then come up with a formal validation process. Any package or
> set of packages that might have hundreds of interface details would become a
> major problem to incorporate into something as formal as the ARM.

Interesing, i did not know this. Is there any information about this
in the net? May be this formality is why most of the people in the
community are not taking part in the standarization process.

> 
> What needs to happen is to have some kind of second tier of "standard" that
> doesn't require all that formality. If a thing could be reasonably well
> described so that an understanding emerged as to what it should be/do and
> the vendors were willing to include it in an identical way (same interface
> specs, at least, or reference implementation) in all their implementations,
> then you've got your "standard" without needing a ***STANDARD*** :-)

This is what is normally called a defacto standard. Raising initial 
interest for a certain sloution and setting up alliences to enforce
the solution normally creates such standards. But if these alliences
breaking up, such standards start to dissolve and lot of derivates
of the original solution are back on the market gain. I like to
avoid this.

But your second tier idea may be the right point! This second tier
could become some kind of public entry process for the ISO WG which
is in the first stage (input) less formal and at the output as formal
as ISO requieres.
Establishing such a second tier interface to the public would be
an interesting project for the open source community, and may
be some ideas of the JPC may be taken over for this purpose.

I am realy wondering if there are comparable projects in the
net exisiting?!


Regards
    M.Erdmann

> 
> MDC
> --
> Marin David Condic
> Senior Software Engineer
> Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
> Enabling the digital revolution
> e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
> 
> 
>