Re: CPAN style Ada repository

[Felix Krause <usenet@flyx.org>]

On 2013-11-28 15:41:37 +0000, banjo said:

> Would there be interest in a Perl CPAN style Ada repository?

In general this is a great idea. There are a lot of things
to consider though. I don't think it's a good idea to launch
a site that hosts whole Ada probjects, basically because there
are already great sites for doing that, including support
for various version control systems and bug tracking.

IMHO it would make more sense to have something like the BSD
ports trees (or similarly, Homebrew for OSX): Just a list of
available libraries / tools with a unified build mechanism and
dependency resolution. The projects themselves could be hosted
elsewhere, so we'd have a repository of meta information that
is able to resolve dependencies, retrieve source code and
compile libraries.

The major problem is that from what I know, Ada code is not
very portable between compilers (even the .ads/.adb naming
convention is GNAT-specific). Should only GNAT be supported?
If not, should project be required to build on different
compilers in order to be allowed in the repository?

Of course, anything that allows open source Ada projects to
make more use of each other would improve the current
situation.

-- 
Felix Krause
http://flyx.org/