Re: Ada.Networks.Sockets hierarchy for standardization? (sf: ada0y-net-std)

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Michael Erdmann wrote:
> Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote:
>> For discussion: I have thrown together this evening
>> a more formalized view of some "chicken scratching" I did on my
>> train commute home this evening. The diagram is available at my
>> web site (see PDF link further on).
> 
> I like it. But may be the names services should be put under
> Services.
...
> Michael

While it is too soon to judge general interest in this project, based
upon the pulse of other Ada socket articles in this newsgroup, I think
it is time _something_ was _started_ in this vein. Funding would be
nice, but I don't think we can wait for it. The clock is ticking.

Rather than lose precious time on this, since defining standards and
reference implementations can require considerable effort, I have
taken some initiative and registered a request at sourcforge for
an ada0Y-net-std project to be created there. The website indicates
that they need 2 business days to review and to respond to the request.

If all goes well, I hope to have a project started there by next
Wednesday (June 4th). There we can hold discussions, and more easily
post and revise documents, and later code. They also provide NNTP
access, though I don't know how well it works yet. If it works well,
this would give us our own private newsgroup in which to hold
project discussions in. Alternatively, I suppose an email list
is ok, but I prefer a newsgroup approach, if possible.

This is not to say that no input will be solicited from comp.lang.ada.
Au contrare! However, to reach consensus, you pretty much have to
narrow the list of participants, or your discussion will become a
free-for-all. Meetings with many people take longer and usually
accomplish less. I don't believe that there is much time for us
to waste (if Ada0Y means 2005, then there is little time waste).

The way I see things happening, is that a summary will be posted here
in comp.lang.ada periodically. Interested participants can then come
back to the forge's NNTP server and review past discussions and post
their comments and contributions.

I will be looking for volunteers for various things. I can volunteer
my some of my own time on various things and code, but depending upon
when the submission deadline is, I'll probably need other people to
contribute code and documents as well. Can anyone state when our
ARG submission deadline is? Randy?

For this project to be successful, this project must have
someone to run with this once we have a reference implementation and
document (I don't think I'm the best person for that job).
At a minimum, we need the document to submit (the reference implementation
is to simply help us flush out the problems). So I need
someone to work with the ARG: preferably someone more knowledgeable
about that standards process and perhaps does Ada as
their day job (I am just an Ada hobbiest, after all).

By taking this initiative, I am not necessarily presuming that I should
be the "moderator" or "organizer" of this effort. I would gladly hand
it over to someone else, if they will take the reins and lead this
horse to success. I am just assuming that nobody really wants to take
the time to do this, and so I'll contribute what I can to this
process and at least get things going. If no one steps up to the plate,
then I am willing to take this as far as I am able to. I am really
hoping however, that I can get at least one volunteer to eventually
write up the necessary documentation to submit to the ARG, in the
language and preciseness that they need.

There are already some socket bindings out there, in different forms.
I would be interested in hearing if any of these copyright owners
would be willing to allow portions of those packages to be spliced
into a new framework, for inclusion into the reference implementation.
This project aims to provide a GNAT reference implementation, to help work
out problems. I have registered the sourceforge project to use the
LGPL license, but I suspect that this also needs to be further discussed
and revised (a license selection was required to make the application for
a hosted project).  If you can contribute existing code, then please indicate
what your copyright requirements/restrictions are.

In the worst case of failure, we may just end up with another
non-standard sockets library (or even worse I guess, it might
remain unfinished). But I _want_ this to succeed and I think
there is enough interest generally that this _can_ work. It is my
personal opinion that an Ada without standard socket library support
will cause the language to wither and die, for general purpose
computing uses. Networking today is nearly as important as doing
Text_IO.

Your thoughts?  If you are interested in this project, please indicate
what you can contribute, and capacity/when/how-much if applicable.  If you
feel that this is a "bad idea" or the wrong approach, then don't be
afraid to speak your mind. I'd rather find out now, rather than face
failure a year from now (but state concrete reasons, rather than "I
don't like it" etc.)
-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg