GNAT and GCC 3.0

GNAT and GCC 3.0

[G. Fisher]

Does anyone know when a version (public or commercial) of GNAT that is
compatable with GCC 3.0 will be available?  I'm told that this has
been in the works for awhile.

thanks in advance

Greg

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ted Dennison]

In article <9a575af3.0110020747.2304ce86@posting.google.com>, G. Fisher says...
>
>Does anyone know when a version (public or commercial) of GNAT that is
>compatable with GCC 3.0 will be available?  I'm told that this has
>been in the works for awhile.

RSN. If you want to keep abreast of this, probably the best way is to monitor
the gcc mailing list (although its pretty high-volume). The top thread I see
there right now is titled "Ada files now checked in." For more info, you should
probably read that thread.

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Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[David Starner]

On 2 Oct 2001 08:47:11 -0700, G. Fisher <gregfisher2@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Does anyone know when a version (public or commercial) of GNAT that is
> compatable with GCC 3.0 will be available?  I'm told that this has
> been in the works for awhile.

The way I understand it, never. The first GNAT based off of GCC 3.x will
be based off GCC 3.1, which they are approaching the freeze date on.

-- 
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org
"I saw a daemon stare into my face, and an angel touch my breast; each 
one softly calls my name . . . the daemon scares me less."
- "Disciple", Stuart Davis

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ted Dennison]

In article <9pd0j8$7pu1@news.cis.okstate.edu>, David Starner says...
>
>On 2 Oct 2001 08:47:11 -0700, G. Fisher <gregfisher2@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Does anyone know when a version (public or commercial) of GNAT that is
>> compatable with GCC 3.0 will be available?  I'm told that this has
>The way I understand it, never. The first GNAT based off of GCC 3.x will
>be based off GCC 3.1, which they are approaching the freeze date on.

According to what I read, the freeze date is tonight. So no-one bother Richard
Kenner and the ACT folks until they get the rest of those "kinks" straightened
out, OK? :-)

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Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ted Dennison]

In article <Zlpu7.13306$ev2.22014@www.newsranger.com>, Ted Dennison says...
>
>In article <9pd0j8$7pu1@news.cis.okstate.edu>, David Starner says...
>>
>>On 2 Oct 2001 08:47:11 -0700, G. Fisher <gregfisher2@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> Does anyone know when a version (public or commercial) of GNAT that is
>>> compatable with GCC 3.0 will be available?  I'm told that this has
>>The way I understand it, never. The first GNAT based off of GCC 3.x will
>>be based off GCC 3.1, which they are approaching the freeze date on.
>
>According to what I read, the freeze date is tonight. So no-one bother Richard
>Kenner and the ACT folks until they get the rest of those "kinks" straightened
>out, OK? :-)

To clarify, that appears to be the freeze date for GCC 3.0.2, which the main
page says will be out sometime this month. The freeze date for 3.1 is the 15th
(for "major new functionality" anyway). I don't know enough about how the gcc
process works to say which will have the first appearance of Gnat.

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Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[David Starner]

On Tue, 02 Oct 2001 21:21:26 GMT, Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
> To clarify, that appears to be the freeze date for GCC 3.0.2, which the main
> page says will be out sometime this month. The freeze date for 3.1 is the 15th
> (for "major new functionality" anyway). I don't know enough about how the gcc
> process works to say which will have the first appearance of Gnat.

3.1. GCC 3.0.2 is a bugfix release only.

-- 
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org
"I saw a daemon stare into my face, and an angel touch my breast; each 
one softly calls my name . . . the daemon scares me less."
- "Disciple", Stuart Davis

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

gregfisher2@yahoo.com (G. Fisher) wrote in message news:<9a575af3.0110020747.2304ce86@posting.google.com>...
> Does anyone know when a version (public or commercial) of GNAT that is
> compatable with GCC 3.0 will be available?  I'm told that this has
> been in the works for awhile.
> 
> thanks in advance
> 
> Greg


We do not have an announced date. There are certainly known
problems in the version for which the sources are available
now at gcc, so this version should be regarded as strictly
experimental. We will announce a version of GNAT Pro
based on GCC 3.x at some point in the future.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Rob_NOWHERE.]

Will all the gnat tools, such as gnatmake and others, also be part
of gcc now? 

After installing gcc 3.X, which supports Ada, will all the exsiting gnat
commands, and options, etc... still work the same way? 

I have looked today at http://gcc.gnu.org and saw nothing about this?

I think it is great that gcc now supports Ada. This means I can write
all my software in Ada, and all what the user have to do is use gcc
to compile it, and they do not have to download gnat as a separate task
to build the software.

I think this alone will cause an immediate increase in the use of Ada in
the open source committy. 

thanks,
Rob

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Pascal Obry]

Rob_NOWHERE.@. writes:

> Will all the gnat tools, such as gnatmake and others, also be part
> of gcc now? 

The sources are there.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Claude SIMON]

Rob_NOWHERE.@. a �crit :

> Will all the gnat tools, such as gnatmake and others, also be part
> of gcc now?
>
> After installing gcc 3.X, which supports Ada, will all the exsiting gnat
> commands, and options, etc... still work the same way?
>
> I have looked today at http://gcc.gnu.org and saw nothing about this?
>
> I think it is great that gcc now supports Ada. This means I can write
> all my software in Ada, and all what the user have to do is use gcc
> to compile it, and they do not have to download gnat as a separate task
> to build the software.
>
> I think this alone will cause an immediate increase in the use of Ada in
> the open source committy.
>
> thanks,
> Rob

Rob_NOWHERE.@. a �crit :

> Will all the gnat tools, such as gnatmake and others, also be part
> of gcc now?
>
> After installing gcc 3.X, which supports Ada, will all the exsiting gnat
> commands, and options, etc... still work the same way?
>
> I have looked today at http://gcc.gnu.org and saw nothing about this?
>
> I think it is great that gcc now supports Ada. This means I can write
> all my software in Ada, and all what the user have to do is use gcc
> to compile it, and they do not have to download gnat as a separate task
> to build the software.
>
> I think this alone will cause an immediate increase in the use of Ada in
> the open source committy.
>
> thanks,
> Rob

Rob_NOWHERE.@. a �crit :

> Will all the gnat tools, such as gnatmake and others, also be part
> of gcc now?
>
> After installing gcc 3.X, which supports Ada, will all the exsiting gnat
> commands, and options, etc... still work the same way?
>
> I have looked today at http://gcc.gnu.org and saw nothing about this?
>
> I think it is great that gcc now supports Ada. This means I can write
> all my software in Ada, and all what the user have to do is use gcc
> to compile it, and they do not have to download gnat as a separate task
> to build the software.
>
> I think this alone will cause an immediate increase in the use of Ada in
> the open source committy.
>
> thanks,
> Rob

Rob_NOWHERE.@. a �crit :

> Will all the gnat tools, such as gnatmake and others, also be part
> of gcc now?
>
> After installing gcc 3.X, which supports Ada, will all the exsiting gnat
> commands, and options, etc... still work the same way?
>
> I have looked today at http://gcc.gnu.org and saw nothing about this?
>
> I think it is great that gcc now supports Ada. This means I can write
> all my software in Ada, and all what the user have to do is use gcc
> to compile it, and they do not have to download gnat as a separate task
> to build the software.
>
> I think this alone will cause an immediate increase in the use of Ada in
> the open source committy.
>
> thanks,
> Rob

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ted Dennison]

In article <9pdki6$9281@news.cis.okstate.edu>, David Starner says...
>
>On Tue, 02 Oct 2001 21:21:26 GMT, Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
>> To clarify, that appears to be the freeze date for GCC 3.0.2, which the main
>> page says will be out sometime this month. The freeze date for 3.1 is the 15th
>> (for "major new functionality" anyway). I don't know enough about how the gcc
>> process works to say which will have the first appearance of Gnat.
>
>3.1. GCC 3.0.2 is a bugfix release only.

..which would set the *current* official release date at April 15.

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Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Rob_NOWHERE.@. wrote in message news:<9peeff027mb@drn.newsguy.com>...
> Will all the gnat tools, such as gnatmake and others, also be part
> of gcc now?

Yes, but see below

 
> After installing gcc 3.X, which supports Ada, will all 
> the exsiting gnat
> commands, and options, etc... still work the same way? 

The which supports Ada is misleading, see below

> I have looked today at http://gcc.gnu.org and saw nothing 
> about this?

Nor would you expect to

> I think it is great that gcc now supports Ada.

Good, but see below

> This means I can write
> all my software in Ada, and all what the user have to do > is  use gcc
> to compile it, and they do not have to download gnat as a 
> separate task
> to build the software.

No, that's completely wrong, and as in my other post, I
think a lot of people are confused here. GCC is a compiler
collection that includes many front ends (e.g. Objective C,
Fortran etc)

A given install of gcc is done for a specific set of languages, and I
would guess that most people would
continue not to bother to download Ada, and to include
Ada in the configuration.

> I think this alone will cause an immediate increase in 
> the use of Ada in the open source comunity.

Perhaps, but be sure this is not based on a misunderstanding of the
situation. I think you and a lot
of other people are interpreting this announcement to mean
that all versions of gcc will automatically include Ada,
this is not at all the case.

Robert Dewar

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message news:<sbnu7.13086$ev2.21195@www.newsranger.com>...

 RSN. If you want to keep abreast of this, probably the best way is to
monitor
> the gcc mailing list (although its pretty high-volume). The top thread I see
> there right now is titled "Ada files now checked in." For more info, you should
> probably read that thread.


This is misleading. I think the questioner here wants to
know when a fully usable version of GNAT based on GCC 3
will be available, and we have not said RSN to that yet,
we do not even have a fixed schedule, though we have some
customers using beta versions of this technology. The
sources at gcc represent work in progress, and as I have
mentioned before, there are known problems. The main reason for
putting sources there now is so that build and testing
procedures can be worked out. Don't expect a fully usable
public version of GNAT from these sources for a while, and
as far as the commercial version goes, that is quite a
separate issue and will involve products directly available
from Ada Core Technologies as in the past.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ronald Cole]

dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:
> We do not have an announced date. There are certainly known
> problems in the version for which the sources are available
> now at gcc, so this version should be regarded as strictly
> experimental. We will announce a version of GNAT Pro
> based on GCC 3.x at some point in the future.

As I'm sure you're well aware, we've all been waiting for a release of
gnat on a version of gcc newer than 2.8.1 since at least November
1999...

I remember offering to help since I was able to patch 3.11p to compile
itself with gcc-2.95, but you wouldn't cut loose with your precious
"wave front" sources back then.

Feh!  It'll be here when it gets here and no sooner.

-- 
Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA  93556-1412
Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com>      Phone: (760) 499-9142
President, CEO                             Fax: (760) 499-9152
My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084  4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 4 Oct 2001 11:38:27 -0700, dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) wrote:

>The sources at gcc represent work in progress, and as I have
>mentioned before, there are known problems.

Who will act as commiters for the GCC GNAT sources? ACT people, I
hope?

I ask because although the GCC/GNAT integration is great, I fear that
quality may suffer.

>Don't expect a fully usable public version of GNAT from these sources
>for a while, 

BTW, the GNAT.Sockets package (renamed to GNAT_Sockets) works very
well with 3.13p. Great!

                                                         /L/e/k/t/u

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ted Dennison]

In article <m3vghvau6m.fsf@yakisoba.forte-intl.com>, Ronald Cole says...
>
>As I'm sure you're well aware, we've all been waiting for a release of
>gnat on a version of gcc newer than 2.8.1 since at least November
>1999...
>
>I remember offering to help since I was able to patch 3.11p to compile
>itself with gcc-2.95, but you wouldn't cut loose with your precious
>"wave front" sources back then.

Well, now you'll be able to. The sources are there now, although there are
reports of trouble bootstraping with them as-is. Hopefully "wave fronts" won't
be much of an issue any more either, as they will just be rogue personal copies,
as far as the baseline is concerned, until they are checked in.

>Feh!  It'll be here when it gets here and no sooner.
Well, if its a 3.1 only issue, then the current release date estimate would be
April 15, 2002. But you could always make yourself a beta build from the CVS
sources before then, if you want.

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Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Britt Snodgrass]

dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) wrote in message news:<5ee5b646.0110041038.5c321817@posting.google.com>...

> mentioned before, there are known problems. The main reason for
> putting sources there now is so that build and testing
> procedures can be worked out. Don't expect a fully usable
> public version of GNAT from these sources for a while, and

Will having GNAT available as an (optional) part of the GCC source
distrubution result is a significantly simpler process for building
GNAT cross-compilers to target additional processor families?  I'm
thinking of processors such as the AMD 29050 and StrongARM that have
long been supported by the GCC C compiler but not by the public
versions of GNAT.

Britt Snodgrass

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Florian Weimer]

britt@adapower.net (Britt Snodgrass) writes:

> Will having GNAT available as an (optional) part of the GCC source
> distrubution result is a significantly simpler process for building
> GNAT cross-compilers to target additional processor families?

Most certainly, no.  Building cross-compilers has never been extremly
difficult with GCC, although compiling the whole toolchain (assembler,
linker, and so on) is quite bit of work.

AFAIK, the main problem in retargeting GNAT is not the compiler
itself, but the run-time library.  Especially if you want to use
tasking, the run-time library has to be carefully adjusted to the
target environment, otherwise you won't get the Ada semantics.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Juanma Barranquero <lektu@terra.es> wrote in message news:<c2sqrt454emql2jpkcemg268iqcju9psvs@4ax.com>...
> On 4 Oct 2001 11:38:27 -0700, dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) wrote:
> 
> 
> I ask because although the GCC/GNAT integration is great, > I fear that quality may suffer.

This is not a commercial product. It will be maintained by
the gcc community as is true for other components of the
gnu project. Most certainly ACT will make contributions
to this, but we do not control this process, and cannot
make any guarantees about quality. The quality of any
component of gcc that is publicly maintained by the
community depends on the care of those involved.

Note that ACT as a company is not involved in the maintenance of GNAT
at gnu.org. That's because FSF
maintainers are individuals, not companies. I am the
official FSF maintainer for GNAT, which means that I
will coordinate the activities, but it does not mean
(and could not mean) that somehow I can guarantee the
quality of what is there at any particular point in
time.

The snapshot experimental versions of gcc components that
are available at gnu.org are a tremendous resource, and
allow the community to access and contribute to the latest
development, but you should not mistake them for commercial
products.

> 
> >Don't expect a fully usable public version of GNAT from these sources
> >for a while, 
> 
> BTW, the GNAT.Sockets package (renamed to GNAT_Sockets) works very
> well with 3.13p. Great!
> 
>                                                          /L/e/k/t/u

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com> wrote in message news:<m3vghvau6m.fsf@yakisoba.forte-intl.com>...
> I remember offering to help since I was able to patch
> 3.11p to compile itself with gcc-2.95,

Well it was easy enough to do a patch that would sort of
allow 3.11 to work with gcc-2.95, but the result was hopeless from an
Ada point of view, since 2.95 had so
many serious unfixed bugs that might not have affected
g++ so much, but really resulted in a completely unusable
Ada port (as evidenced by a huge number of failures in
our test suites).

A major part of the effort in getting GNAT to some resaonable level of
compatibility with gcc was to check
in thousands of lines of patches to fix these deficiencies
in 2.95 (many of these were 2.8.1 patches that had never
made it to 2.95). That work is reasonably complete, and
although the current checked in sources are still not
at the point where we feel that a reliable commercial
product (or public release) can be generated from this
version of the sources, we are definitely getting nearer.

Internally at ACT, we are working on identifying the
remaining problems and fixing them (as is normal, the
issue is not so much fixing the problems, as identifying
why some giant test case is not working -- and these test
cases are mostly proprietary code, so this is something
we have to work on).

As we work out the necessary fixes, they will eventually
be reflected in the sources at gnu.org, and eventually we
may be able to bring our internal tree into very close
correspondence with the one at gnu.org (right now our
primary internal tree is still 2.8.1 based, since that
is still the only fully reliable version).

> but you wouldn't cut loose with your precious
> "wave front" sources back then.

It's not a matter of precious, but in our judgment, it would
have been quite unhelpful to release random sets of sources
which had not been fully field tested. The sources at gnu.org are of
quite a different character, and it is important to understand that,
unlike the commercial releases of GNAT, they have not successfully
passed our
internal quality testing.

The good thing about the sources being at gnu.org is that
it allows the general community to contribute more effectively, but it
is important to understand that the
consequence is that there can be multiple versions of 
GNAT around from this source and you need to be definitely
aware of what you are getting and what you can expect from it in terms
of quality and reliability.

ACT will continue to release commercial versions of GNAT
that have been through all our quality procedures, and
at least for a limited set of targets, will follow along
with corresponding public releases, to be available on our
libre site at www.act-europe.fr

Eventually, we will get the ACATS test suite set up as
part of the gnu.org material, as well as a selected set
of ACT tests that we wrote and which can be distributed.
That will help ensure that the gnu.org version stays
coherent. We also will move towards a situation where
people will be able to build GNAT to check that their
gcc patches do not upset its integrity, but of course
there is no guarantee that any given days snapshots
are fully reliable.

Robert Dewar

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

britt@adapower.net (Britt Snodgrass) wrote in message news:<36c6f8dd.0110051506.3fdabae0@posting.google.com>...
> dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) wrote in message news:<5ee5b646.0110041038.5c321817@posting.google.com>...

> Will having GNAT available as an (optional) part of the 
> GCC source distrubution

    GNAT *is* part of the GCC source distribution. What
    parts you pick up if you do not pick up the whole
    distribution is up to you.

> result is a significantly simpler process for building
> cross-compilers to target additional processor families?    
> I'm thinking of processors such as the AMD 29050 and 
> StrongARM that have long been supported by the GCC C 
> compiler but not by the public versions of GNAT.
> 
> Britt Snodgrass

No. The process is straightforward from a build point of
view with either version of GNAT. Of course the issues of
supporting tasking, and the full tool set are completely
independent of the build process.

Why would you think otherwise?

Porting GNAT to a new target is never a trivial task. We
usually consider that internally a straightforward Unix
port is 6-12 person months with all the necessary tools
and testing, and cross ports, or ports to unusual operating
systems can be an order of magnitude more.

The one thing that having a version of GNAT that is compatible with
GCC 3 helps with is that there are some
new targets that are only available with GCC 3 (and were
not available with GCC 2.8.1), and furthermore some other
ports are in much better shape. But that has to do with
the version of GNAT you are using, not with whether it
is part of the GCC source distribution.

Porting GNAT to other than vanilla Unix systems on
traditional byte addressable machines is definitely
not straightforward. As far as we know the only
such port ever achieved outside ACT was Doug Rupp's
port to DOS (and Doug now works for ACT -- where he is
the primary maintainer of the port of GNAT for VMS -
which is certainly the trickiest of all the ports :-)

I certainly do not want to discourage people from trying,
but on the other hand, it is important to understand the
magnitude of the task at least a little bit!


Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[David Botton]

Fantastic! I had misunderstood and thought that ACT would no longer be
making public releases and public packages would become dependant on
volunteers building their packages from the gcc sources. A major thank you
for the efforts and expense to support the public in advance!

David Botton

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Dewar" <dewar@gnat.com>

> ACT will continue to release commercial versions of GNAT
> that have been through all our quality procedures, and
> at least for a limited set of targets, will follow along
> with corresponding public releases, to be available on our
> libre site at www.act-europe.fr

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message Hopefully "wave fronts" won't
> be much of an issue any more either, as they will just be rogue personal copies,
> as far as the baseline is concerned, until they are checked in.

Well since Ted is not a user of GNAT Professional, he is
a bit confused on what wavefronts are about, so I had better clarify
(the reference to "rogue personal copies"
being distinctly peculiar).

For users of GNAT Professional, ACT makes available in
some cases latest fully qualified development versions
to fix specific problems. These wavefronts have been fully
qualified against our test suites (ACATS, ACT test suite,
DEC test suite). Whereas the GCC baseline is never in general
qualified against these suites (it can't be because
these are not public suites). We will setup so that at
least ACATS testing is doable in the gnu.org environment,
but only a very small selection of the ACT test suite can
be made available for this purpose, and none of the DEC
test suite.

The ACT development and management of GNAT Professional will not be
affected in any way by the gnu.org baseline,
and the procedures for support of our customers will
remain unchanged. The only interaction is a mutually
beneficial exchange of patches, ACT will contribute
fixes to the baseline, and also from time to time new
features and development. On the other hand, hopefully
others will also contribute to the baseline, and in cases
where we think it is useful, these can also propagate to
the GNAT Professional sources.

In the long run, the idea is to keep the two trees more or
less in synch, but at any one time, there can be differences in both
directions.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Florian Weimer]

dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:

> Note that ACT as a company is not involved in the maintenance of
> GNAT at gnu.org. That's because FSF maintainers are individuals, not
> companies.

In this case, you should probably remove the following two lines from
the files in the GNU CVS repository.

-- GNAT was originally developed  by the GNAT team at  New York University. --
-- It is now maintained by Ada Core Technologies Inc (http://www.gnat.com). --

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ronald Cole]

Bollocks.  I still have our entire email transaction from 1997.  The
truth is that you wanted your cake and eat it, too.  You wanted an
"Aladdin"-style arrangement: a version you can "hoard" for a year or
two before you release it to the public.  The only problem I have with
that is that GNAT is based on the GCC backend, which ACT doesn't own.
Yes, the GPL allows software hoarding, and unfortunately Stallman is
ok with that, so you are within your right.  That doesn't make it
a "good thing", however.

Open development hasn't been "dangerous" for the linux kernel.  In
fact, more eyes during the development process has been a good thing.
Your refusal to do the same for GNAT is most likely the reason it's
been locked to GCC-2.8.x for almost five years: you faced the same
problems that the authors of proprietary, binary-only modules did.

-- 
Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA  93556-1412
Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com>      Phone: (760) 499-9142
President, CEO                             Fax: (760) 499-9152
My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084  4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Pat Rogers]

"Ronald Cole" <ronald@forte-intl.com> wrote in message
news:m3669r79m7.fsf@yakisoba.forte-intl.com...
<snip>

I wonder if you have any idea how badly you come across on this newsgroup.
When given a choice, people do business with people they like -- not those
who generally spew bile.  The fact that I recognize your name is not a
positive thing here.

---
Patrick Rogers                       Consulting and Training in:
http://www.classwide.com          Real-Time/OO Languages
progers@classwide.com               Hard Deadline Schedulability Analysis
(281)648-3165                                 Software Fault Tolerance

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[David Starner]

On Sun, 07 Oct 2001 22:30:38 GMT, Pat Rogers <progers@classwide.com> wrote:
> I wonder if you have any idea how badly you come across on this newsgroup.
> When given a choice, people do business with people they like -- not those
> who generally spew bile.  The fact that I recognize your name is not a
> positive thing here.

You must have a thin skin, then. The post you reply to may have been a
little hot, but it wasn't exactly spewing bile. It sounded fairly
well-reasoned and argued, and didn't contain ad homine attacks or any
other signs of a flame.

-- 
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org
"I saw a daemon stare into my face, and an angel touch my breast; each 
one softly calls my name . . . the daemon scares me less."
- "Disciple", Stuart Davis

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 6 Oct 2001 07:24:27 -0700, dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) wrote:

>I am the
>official FSF maintainer for GNAT, which means that I
>will coordinate the activities, but it does not mean
>(and could not mean) that somehow I can guarantee the
>quality of what is there at any particular point in
>time.

Yes, I understand that.

Thanks,

                                                          /L/e/k/t/u

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[John English]

David Botton wrote:
> 
> Fantastic! I had misunderstood and thought that ACT would no longer be
> making public releases and public packages would become dependant on
> volunteers building their packages from the gcc sources...

...or would, like Perl/Python/Tcl, have Windows binaries available
from Active State with a restrictive license that makes them freely
downloadable but which prevents them being redistributed to third
parties... :-(

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 John English              | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk
 Senior Lecturer           | http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je
 Dept. of Computing        | ** NON-PROFIT CD FOR CS STUDENTS **
 University of Brighton    |    -- see http://burks.bton.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Samuel Tardieu]

On  8/10, John English wrote:
| David Botton wrote:
| > 
| > Fantastic! I had misunderstood and thought that ACT would no longer be
| > making public releases and public packages would become dependant on
| > volunteers building their packages from the gcc sources...
| 
| ...or would, like Perl/Python/Tcl, have Windows binaries available
| from Active State with a restrictive license that makes them freely
| downloadable but which prevents them being redistributed to third
| parties... :-(

Please do not spread FUD.

This is *not* doable with GNAT. ACT does not hold the copyright on GNAT
sources, and thus is not allowed to make any change to the license. Only
the FSF, which is the copyright holder, would be allowed to distribute
GNAT under a more restrictive license.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Steffen Huber]

Robert Dewar wrote:
[snip]
> Porting GNAT to other than vanilla Unix systems on
> traditional byte addressable machines is definitely
> not straightforward. As far as we know the only
> such port ever achieved outside ACT was Doug Rupp's
> port to DOS (and Doug now works for ACT -- where he is
> the primary maintainer of the port of GNAT for VMS -
> which is certainly the trickiest of all the ports :-)

There once was a port of GNAT 3.03 to RISC OS (which is
very much non-Unix - you could think of it as a DOS-like
operating system with a shiny GUI on top of it, but
running on ARM processors), done by Peter Burwood.

And I still live in hope that one day the RISC OS gcc
portmaster will attempt a new GNAT port...

[snip]

Steffen

-- 
steffen.huber@gmx.de               steffen@huber-net.de
GCC for RISC OS  - http://www.arcsite.de/hp/gcc/
Private homepage - http://www.huber-net.de/

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[John English]

Samuel Tardieu wrote:
> 
> On  8/10, John English wrote:
> | David Botton wrote:
> | >
> | > Fantastic! I had misunderstood and thought that ACT would no longer be
> | > making public releases and public packages would become dependant on
> | > volunteers building their packages from the gcc sources...
> |
> | ...or would, like Perl/Python/Tcl, have Windows binaries available
> | from Active State with a restrictive license that makes them freely
> | downloadable but which prevents them being redistributed to third
> | parties... :-(
> 
> Please do not spread FUD.
> 
> This is *not* doable with GNAT. ACT does not hold the copyright on GNAT
> sources, and thus is not allowed to make any change to the license. Only
> the FSF, which is the copyright holder, would be allowed to distribute
> GNAT under a more restrictive license.

Does this apply to binaries? Certainly Perl, Python and Tcl are "open source"
in some form (Perl is Perl Artistic License, Tcl is (c) Regents of University
of Calfornia, Python is something else :) but this does not appear to apply to
precompiled binaries for Windows, which Active State say are not redistributable
without their permission. (I have asked for permission to do this but have not
received a reply to my email.)

The sources are of course available and redistributable.

Not being a lawyer, I don't know if the GPL would prevent such conditions
being imposed on a precompiled binary made from GPL source, or whether
the vendor is merely obliged to point you at the sources and say "here
you are, you can compile it yourself if you want to, but you can't give
away copies of *our* compiled binaries".

Certainly Active State's lawyers appear to believe that the Perl Artistic
License and the Regents of UoC license allow this kind of restriction to
be applied to binaries... :-(

If you tell me that this is indeed FUD, and that the GPL terms prevent
restrictions on redistributing binaries produced from GPL source, I will
be delighted to be proven wrong!

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 John English              | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk
 Senior Lecturer           | http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je
 Dept. of Computing        | ** NON-PROFIT CD FOR CS STUDENTS **
 University of Brighton    |    -- see http://burks.bton.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Pat Rogers]

"David Starner" <dvdeug@x8b4e53cd.dhcp.okstate.edu> wrote in message
news:9pr6e8$aai1@news.cis.okstate.edu...
> On Sun, 07 Oct 2001 22:30:38 GMT, Pat Rogers <progers@classwide.com>
wrote:
> > I wonder if you have any idea how badly you come across on this
newsgroup.
> > When given a choice, people do business with people they like -- not
those
> > who generally spew bile.  The fact that I recognize your name is not a
> > positive thing here.
>
> You must have a thin skin, then. The post you reply to may have been a
> little hot, but it wasn't exactly spewing bile. It sounded fairly
> well-reasoned and argued, and didn't contain ad homine attacks or any
> other signs of a flame.

No, it wasn't the worst of his by any means, and there are other people who
post much worse at any given moment, but he's usually very sarcastic and
caustic.  Big chip on his shoulder for some reason.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Aidan Skinner]

On Mon, 08 Oct 2001 13:06:39 +0100, John English <je@brighton.ac.uk> wrote
in <3BC196CF.ACEA8F64@brighton.ac.uk>:

>  If you tell me that this is indeed FUD, and that the GPL terms prevent
>  restrictions on redistributing binaries produced from GPL source, I will
>  be delighted to be proven wrong!

This is indeed the case. One of the major points of diffrerence between the
GPL and the artistic and BSD-like licences.

- Aidan
-- 
http://www.velvet.net/~aidan/           aidan@velvet.net
No Fear

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[David Botton]

GNAT is GPL so this is not a concern.

"John English" <je@brighton.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3BC16DA1.8D219F94@brighton.ac.uk...
> ...or would, like Perl/Python/Tcl, have Windows binaries available
> from Active State with a restrictive license that makes them freely
> downloadable but which prevents them being redistributed to third
> parties... :-(

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[David Botton]

Today "open source" has been dragged through the mud and is a worthless
term.

GPL does not prevent such conditions being placed even on the binaries.

"The freedom to redistribute copies must include binary or executable forms
of the program, as well as source code, for both modified and unmodified
versions. It is ok if there is no way to produce a binary or executable
form, but people must have the freedom to redistribute such forms should
they find a way to make them. "

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

David Botton

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Matthew Woodcraft]

"David Botton" <David@Botton.com> writes:

> Today "open source" has been dragged through the mud and is a worthless
> term.
> 
> GPL does not prevent such conditions being placed even on the binaries.

"Does not allow", surely?

-M-

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ted Dennison]

In article <3BC196CF.ACEA8F64@brighton.ac.uk>, John English says...
>
>Does this apply to binaries? Certainly Perl, Python and Tcl are "open source"
>in some form (Perl is Perl Artistic License, Tcl is (c) Regents of University
>
>Not being a lawyer, I don't know if the GPL would prevent such conditions
>being imposed on a precompiled binary made from GPL source, or whether
>the vendor is merely obliged to point you at the sources and say "here
>you are, you can compile it yourself if you want to, but you can't give
>away copies of *our* compiled binaries".

The GPL does indeed prevent such restrictions. You don't really have to be a
laywer to get a pretty good understanding of it. A programmer that can look at
source code and understand what it is doing should be capable of looking at a
page of rules written in their own language and understand what they mean. The
GPL is quite short, and is available here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

Probably the most relevant passage is:
---
3.  You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under
Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2
above provided that you also do one of the following:

* a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code,
which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,

* b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give
any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing
source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding
source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a
medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

* c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to
distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for
noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code
or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
----


The only real danger here is that the copyright holder could always decide to
provide a release under a different license. However, the FSF is the copyright
holder for Gnat, and I doubt they will ever do that. :-)

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

No trees were killed in the sending of this message. 
However a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

RE: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Steven Deller]

Ted,
Hmmm.  I read the relevant passages you quote and see nothing that prevents
*compiled binaries* from being restricted in their distribution.  Yes, the
sources have to be pointed to, but not the binaries.

What did I miss?

Regards,
Steve
"Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen."
Steven Deller        Smooth Sailing LLC
410 757 6924         deller@smsail.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org
> [mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]On Behalf Of Ted Dennison
> Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 11:18 AM
> To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
> Subject: Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0
>
> In article <3BC196CF.ACEA8F64@brighton.ac.uk>, John English says...
> >
> >Does this apply to binaries? Certainly Perl, Python and Tcl
> are "open source"
> >in some form (Perl is Perl Artistic License, Tcl is (c)
> Regents of University
> >
> >Not being a lawyer, I don't know if the GPL would prevent
> such conditions
> >being imposed on a precompiled binary made from GPL source,
> or whether
> >the vendor is merely obliged to point you at the sources and
> say "here
> >you are, you can compile it yourself if you want to, but you
> can't give
> >away copies of *our* compiled binaries".
>
> The GPL does indeed prevent such restrictions. You don't
> really have to be a
> ...
>

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Wes Groleau]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> The only real danger here is that the copyright holder could always decide to
> provide a release under a different license. However, the FSF is the copyright
> holder for Gnat, and I doubt they will ever do that. :-)

IANAL (sounds like an ungrammatical self-description), but I think
that the authors who gave the rights to FSF could legally take 'em
back--except that the government contract that financed GNAT's
basic development requires it to be under the GPL.  And the GPL 
requires any modifications to remain under the GPL.

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: RE: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ted Dennison]

In article <mailman.1002644234.11288.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>, Steven Deller
says...
>Hmmm.  I read the relevant passages you quote and see nothing that prevents
>*compiled binaries* from being restricted in their distribution.  Yes, the
>sources have to be pointed to, but not the binaries.

That's odd, since that's exactly what it says. I'm at a bit of a loss to
understand where the confusion comes from. You do understand that the term
"object code or executable form" includes your "compiled binaries", don't you? 

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

No trees were killed in the sending of this message. 
However a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ronald Cole]

"Pat Rogers" <progers@classwide.com> writes:
> No, it wasn't the worst of his by any means, and there are other people who
> post much worse at any given moment, but he's usually very sarcastic and
> caustic.  Big chip on his shoulder for some reason.

That "reason" is that Robert Dewar threatened to not do business with
clients that sent me wavefront sources so that I could start a
sourceforge-like cvs repository for gnat before there even was a
sourceforge.  A very un-friendly threat for someone who touts his
admiration for open-source and free software.  That one act swore me
off of gnat and after five years, I see that nothing's changed.

Yes, gnat will be in gcc-3, but Mr. Dewar cautions that it is "highly
experimental"; which I interpret to mean that he doesn't consider it
as reliable as the gcc-2.8 based gnat.  I'm reasonable certain that
that wouldn't be the case today had Mr. Dewar really opened up gnat
five years ago and allowed a lot more eyes on his work-in-progress.

-- 
Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA  93556-1412
Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com>      Phone: (760) 499-9142
President, CEO                             Fax: (760) 499-9152
My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084  4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Samuel Tardieu <sam@rfc1149.net> wrote in message news:<mailman.1002537555.4060.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...
> On  8/10, John English wrote:
> This is *not* doable with GNAT. ACT does not hold the copyright on GNAT
> sources, and thus is not allowed to make any change to the license. Only
> the FSF, which is the copyright holder, would be allowed to distribute
> GNAT under a more restrictive license.


Wrong again :-)
The terms of the copyright assignment from NYU to FSF
stipulate that this is not permitted! So even the FSF
can't do this with GNAT.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

"David Botton" <David@Botton.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.1002421815.788.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...
> Fantastic! I had misunderstood and thought that ACT would no longer be
> making public releases and public packages would become dependant on
> volunteers building their packages from the gcc sources. A major thank you
> for the efforts and expense to support the public in advance!


That may be true in the future, when there is a stable
set of sources at gcc which can build a compiler that is
reasonably reliable, but that is not the case yet, so we
decided that we would make 3.14p now for a limited range of targets.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

John English <je@brighton.ac.uk> wrote in message news:<3BC196CF.ACEA8F64@brighton.ac.uk>...
> Not being a lawyer

Then please refrain from legal opinions or guesses :-) :-)
(especially when they are wildly wrong)

, I don't know if the GPL would prevent such conditions
> being imposed on a precompiled binary made from GPL 
> source

Yes, that's the whole point of the GPL. of course it
prevents such conditions being imposed. 

So you may stop worrying

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

"David Botton" <David@Botton.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.1002553572.11003.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...
> Today "open source" has been dragged through the mud and is a worthless
> term.
> 
> GPL does not prevent such conditions being placed even on the binaries.

Surely you mean *does* prevent such [restrictive] conditions, as
clearly shown by your quote of the GPL!

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message news:<EyEw7.21607$ev2.29933@www.newsranger.com>...
> The only real danger here is that the copyright holder 
> could always decide to provide a release under a 
> different license. However, the FSF is the copyright
> holder for Gnat, and I doubt they will ever do that. :-)

To be accurate, the FSF holds the copyrights on the basic
compiler technology, not on all components of the GNAT distribution.
In any case, why is this a "danger". This is
a country which subscribes to international treaties giving
authors copyright control over their work. Why should it
be "dangerous" for them to decide how to execute that
control. If people want to use the GPL, that's indeed
desirable from many points of view, but it is a long step
to declare the use of different licenses as dangerous!

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

"Steven Deller" <deller@smsail.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.1002644234.11288.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...
> Ted,
> Hmmm.  I read the relevant passages you quote and see nothing that prevents
> *compiled binaries* from being restricted in their distribution.  Yes, the
> sources have to be pointed to, but not the binaries.
> 
> What did I miss?

Well I can't tell what you missed, but indeed the GPL
prevents placing any restrictions on redistribution. If
you are unclear about the GPL, I suggest looking through
the GPL FAQ.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Steffen Huber <steffen.huber@gmx.de> wrote in message news:<3BC18CEE.8F86294A@gmx.de>...

>There once was a port of GNAT 3.03 to RISC OS

Yes, that's indeed an example, and I just thought of another, Amiga,
which was a very lively port for a while.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com> wrote in message news:<m3g08sil5p.fsf@yakisoba.forte-intl.com>...

>That "reason" is that Robert Dewar threatened to not do >business
with clients that sent me wavefront sources so
>that I could start a sourceforge-like cvs repository for 
>gnat before there even was a sourceforge.  A very
>un-friendly threat for someone who touts his

This is a fabrication. No such "threat" was made at any
time to any of our customers. We are not in the business
of threatening customers. This is simply a fantasy that
Mr. Cole has constructed (for what reasons I do not know).

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com> wrote in message news:<m3g08sil5p.fsf@yakisoba.forte-intl.com>...

> Yes, gnat will be in gcc-3, but Mr. Dewar cautions that 
> it is "highly experimental"; which I interpret to mean 
> that he doesn't consider it as reliable as the gcc-2.8 
> based gnat.  I'm reasonable certain that
> that wouldn't be the case today had Mr. Dewar really 
> opened up gnat five years ago and allowed a lot more eyes 
> on his work-in-progress.

That would not have helped at all. All the problems are
in gcc, not in gnat. The first task was to take all the
fixes that we had published openly in the GCC 2.8 sources
and fit them into 3.x. Richard Kenner did this work on
behalf of ACT as you will remember, and it involved many
thousands of lines of fairly complex patches.

We then had to steadily fix GCC 3 problems to get GNAT to
work correctly, and it is not a matter of us "not considering" the
current version to be less reliable, it
is that we *know* it is less reliable. How do we know? --
because tests in our test suite based on customer proprietary code are
failing, and of course only we can
work on these problems, and we are doing so (yes, once we
understand the problem, we can create a small cut down
example, but once we understand the problem, we can easily
fix it anyway).

We also have the problem of continued patches to GCC breaking things.
Hopefully soon, more people will be
building GNAT to test their changes, and that will help.
But it is fairly frequent that people check in changes
that break C bootstraps, so that problem won't go away
completely. You have to be careful in picking up the
snap shot sources to get a good set, and that means
watching the gcc mailing list. In general I would advise
anyone interested in picking up GNAT snapshots from 
gnu.org to subscribe to the relevant lists, and get a
feel for what is going on.

Originally we had wanted to delay submitting the sources
till the test suites showed them to be clean, but we decided to submit
them earlier, because they are in reasonable shape for many simple
programs, and because
then people can figure out build procedures etc (most of
the useful discussions so far have been with respect to
build procedures on the gcc list).

Certainly Ron Cole was free, as was anyone else, to get
3.13 running on 3.1 (the issues of getting 3.13 running
are identical to those of getting later versions to run,
and as above, the problems are in gcc, not in gnat). In
fact several people *did* try to get 3.13 running on GCC
3, but no one came near to succeeding, which did  not surprise us,
since it was a huge amount of work, and indeed
the work is still not complete.

Ron, please feel free to set to work and fix any remaining
problems you see :-)

Oh, and by the way ACT now has 35 full time people, "Mr.
Dewar" does not make all the decisions, such decisions
are made by the appropriate groups of people in the company, and
represent a consensus position within ACT.

Robert Dewar

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ronald Cole]

dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:
> This is a fabrication. No such "threat" was made at any
> time to any of our customers. We are not in the business
> of threatening customers. This is simply a fantasy that
> Mr. Cole has constructed (for what reasons I do not know).

I still have our email discussion between you, me and rms from June
1997 where you clearly state that you considered having wavefront
sources out in the public to be so dangerious that you would seriously
consider not giving wavefront releases to customers who were
exercising their GPL rights and giving them to me.  You specifically
used the example of Stallman getting steamed that a Linux distribution
released an internal version of gcc that he didn't intend for public
consumption to support your position.

-- 
Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA  93556-1412
Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com>      Phone: (760) 499-9142
President, CEO                             Fax: (760) 499-9152
My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084  4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ronald Cole]

dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:
> ...that we..
> We then had to..
> How do we know?
> We also...

My point exactly!  Only *you* (plural) know because you kept your
development away from programmers who were actually willing to help
you work on it.

> Ron, please feel free to set to work and fix any remaining
> problems you see :-)

How magnanimous of you!  I wanted to five years ago.  Really.  Did you
forget what started our disagreement?  Your willingness to even
consider stopping sending wavefront sources to your customers who then
sent them to me kinda made me not want to help you out at all.  The
fact that it's been five years and you still make your "p" releases a
year after your "a" releases hasn't been an indication that perhaps I
was wrong about you and that I should change my mind.

-- 
Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA  93556-1412
Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com>      Phone: (760) 499-9142
President, CEO                             Fax: (760) 499-9152
My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084  4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Lutz Donnerhacke]

* Robert Dewar wrote:
>We also have the problem of continued patches to GCC breaking things.
>Hopefully soon, more people will be building GNAT to test their changes,
>and that will help.

This requires a testsuite in the gcc-CVS. Currently it can't be tested and
known failtures can't be added to the testsuite, because there is none.

>watching the gcc mailing list. In general I would advise anyone interested
>in picking up GNAT snapshots from gnu.org to subscribe to the relevant
>lists, and get a feel for what is going on.

Of course. But I'd prefer a checked compiler after bootstrapping.

>Certainly Ron Cole was free, as was anyone else, to get 3.13 running on
>3.1 (the issues of getting 3.13 running are identical to those of getting
>later versions to run, and as above, the problems are in gcc, not in
>gnat).

gcc3.1 does produce much better code than gnat3.13. That's a real reason to
switch. Especially pos_to_rep Implementation of enums are considerably
enhanced.

>In fact several people *did* try to get 3.13 running on GCC 3, but no one
>came near to succeeding, which did not surprise us, since it was a huge
>amount of work, and indeed the work is still not complete.

Of course. Still ... I did not cross a problem in the last few days.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <m3669o0y2u.fsf@yakisoba.forte-intl.com>, Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com> writes:
> dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:
>> This is a fabrication. No such "threat" was made at any
>> time to any of our customers. We are not in the business
>> of threatening customers. This is simply a fantasy that
>> Mr. Cole has constructed (for what reasons I do not know).
> 
> I still have our email discussion between you, me and rms from June
> 1997 where you clearly state that you considered having wavefront
> sources out in the public to be so dangerious that you would seriously
> consider not giving wavefront releases to customers who were
> exercising their GPL rights and giving them to me.  You specifically
> used the example of Stallman getting steamed that a Linux distribution
> released an internal version of gcc that he didn't intend for public
> consumption to support your position.

So who was the customer who was "threatened" ?  RMS ?

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Florian Weimer]

Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen) writes:

> So who was the customer who was "threatened" ?  RMS ?

I don't think so.  After all, RMS didn't try to close down the GCC CVS
after the Red Hat GCC 2.96 incident.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ted Dennison]

In article <slrn9s83jj.k4.lutz@taranis.iks-jena.de>, Lutz Donnerhacke says...
>
>* Robert Dewar wrote:
>>In fact several people *did* try to get 3.13 running on GCC 3, but no one
>>came near to succeeding, which did not surprise us, since it was a huge
>>amount of work, and indeed the work is still not complete.
>
>Of course. Still ... I did not cross a problem in the last few days.

In that case, I may attempt a Windows2K build sometime soon (as soon as I
reinstall my home machine's OS :-( ).

What precisely is involved in downloading the sources? I have CVS installed; but
is there a particular release (-r) I should use? Are there specific directories
I need to grab, or would it be better to take the whole thing?

Should we consider placing our prebuilt binaries somewhere for people to try
out? I know it might not be great for official use, but I'd at least like to see
if that dynamic dispatch bug that has been bothering me (and Tom) has indeed
been fixed. I may not be the only one who'd like to try it out for similarly
valid reasons. I don't know that I have enough webspace to put it on my on site
(I might though).

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

No trees were killed in the sending of this message. 
However a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[David Brown]

Robert Dewar <dewar@gnat.com> wrote:

> Porting GNAT to other than vanilla Unix systems on
> traditional byte addressable machines is definitely
> not straightforward. As far as we know the only
> such port ever achieved outside ACT was Doug Rupp's
> port to DOS (and Doug now works for ACT -- where he is
> the primary maintainer of the port of GNAT for VMS -
> which is certainly the trickiest of all the ports :-)
> 
> I certainly do not want to discourage people from trying,
> but on the other hand, it is important to understand the
> magnitude of the task at least a little bit!

A while back, I started working on porting GNAT to an embedded ARM7TDMI
processor, running a custom OS.  I worked on it for a while, but gave up
because the Arm/Thumb support was so poor in gcc 2.8.1.

I may pick this up now that GNAT is merged into GCC 3.  I did
successfully build the GNAT compiler for this target, but I haven't
taken the time to put any work into the runtime.

I was actually considering implementing one of the restricted runtimes,
since the mapping to the custom OS is much more straightforward.

Dave Brown

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Lutz Donnerhacke]

* Ted Dennison wrote:
>What precisely is involved in downloading the sources? I have CVS
>installed; but is there a particular release (-r) I should use?

No release. Ada ist in the current maintaince branch only.

>Are there specific directories I need to grab, or would it be better to
>take the whole thing?

Take it all. (And then leave out java, c++, objective-c and chill).

>Should we consider placing our prebuilt binaries somewhere for people to try
>out?

No. Please wait for some more stable situation.

>I know it might not be great for official use, but I'd at least like to
>see if that dynamic dispatch bug that has been bothering me (and Tom) has
>indeed been fixed.

You may send me/Florian problematic code, in order to build a testsuite
independed of the somewhat NDAed testsuite of ACT/GNAT.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Lutz Donnerhacke]

* David Brown wrote:
>I may pick this up now that GNAT is merged into GCC 3.  I did
>successfully build the GNAT compiler for this target, but I haven't
>taken the time to put any work into the runtime.

Certainly.

>I was actually considering implementing one of the restricted runtimes,
>since the mapping to the custom OS is much more straightforward.

If you can elaborate somethat more, which problems do you have, several
people may help you. But due to lack of test enviroment nobody could do your
work.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[David Botton]

Yes of course.... typo

DB

----- Original Message ----- 

> > GPL does not prevent such conditions being placed even on the binaries.
> 
> Surely you mean *does* prevent such [restrictive] conditions, as
> clearly shown by your quote of the GPL!

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[David Botton]

Then a thank you for GNAT 3.14p. I can speak for my self in saying that if
not for the ACT packaged GNAT versions, I would have never started
programming in Ada. I hope that if ACT does stop donating a public package
of GNAT that there will be enough volunteers around to keep it going.

If ACT does decide to stop the practice in the future, it would be good to
perhaps post a note about it to give time to try and organize groups like
gnuada.org's Linux group for other platforms.

David Botton



----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Dewar" <dewar@gnat.com>

> That may be true in the future, when there is a stable
> set of sources at gcc which can build a compiler that is
> reasonably reliable, but that is not the case yet, so we
> decided that we would make 3.14p now for a limited range of targets.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Florian Weimer]

lutz@iks-jena.de (Lutz Donnerhacke) writes:

>>I know it might not be great for official use, but I'd at least like to
>>see if that dynamic dispatch bug that has been bothering me (and Tom) has
>>indeed been fixed.
>
> You may send me/Florian problematic code,

Well, you should report compiler bugs to the GCC GNATS bug tracking
system, using the included gccbug script.

> in order to build a testsuite independed of the somewhat NDAed
> testsuite of ACT/GNAT.

Laurent Guerby volunteered to create a test infrastructure for
GNAT, but at the moment, there are some build problems which have
to be solved first.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Lutz Donnerhacke]

* Florian Weimer wrote:
>Laurent Guerby volunteered to create a test infrastructure for
>GNAT, but at the moment, there are some build problems which have
>to be solved first.

Very good.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

lutz@iks-jena.de (Lutz Donnerhacke) wrote in message news:<slrn9s83jj.k4.lutz@taranis.iks-jena.de>...
> Of course. Still ... I did not cross a problem in the 
> last few days.

Good to hear, and not so surprising, we did not move the
sources to gnu.org till they were in reasonably good shape.
I am just cautioning that they are still not passing all
our QA tests, so there are definitely known problems (or
rather known test cases that fail -- the related problems
are not yet understood, that's what we are working on now).

The commercial release of GNAT Professional based on gcc 3.x will not
take place till we have solved the
remaining problems. And indeed the current checked in version at
gnu.org does not yet meet our criteria for
a public release either. But it is in fairly good shape,
and certainly good enough shape to work on build and test
issues, and to be suitable for experimentation.

Robert Dewar

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[John English]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> John English <je@brighton.ac.uk> wrote in message news:<3BC196CF.ACEA8F64@brighton.ac.uk>...
> > Not being a lawyer
> 
> Then please refrain from legal opinions or guesses :-) :-)
> (especially when they are wildly wrong)

I wasn't expressing a legal opinion (I don't have any ;-) or guessing.

I was only expressing a personal concern which arose from experience
with other "open source" products, and I don't believe it was out of
order to have aired that concern.

And I'm glad I did, because various people have now reassured me that
my fears are unfounded. So I can now rest easy in my bed at night,
secure in the protection of the GPL.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 John English              | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk
 Senior Lecturer           | http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je
 Dept. of Computing        | ** NON-PROFIT CD FOR CS STUDENTS **
 University of Brighton    |    -- see http://burks.bton.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ronald Cole]

Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen) writes:
> In article <m3669o0y2u.fsf@yakisoba.forte-intl.com>, Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com> writes:
> > dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:
> >> This is a fabrication. No such "threat" was made at any
> >> time to any of our customers. We are not in the business
> >> of threatening customers. This is simply a fantasy that
> >> Mr. Cole has constructed (for what reasons I do not know).
> > 
> > I still have our email discussion between you, me and rms from June
> > 1997 where you clearly state that you considered having wavefront
> > sources out in the public to be so dangerious that you would seriously
> > consider not giving wavefront releases to customers who were
> > exercising their GPL rights and giving them to me.  You specifically
> > used the example of Stallman getting steamed that a Linux distribution
> > released an internal version of gcc that he didn't intend for public
> > consumption to support your position.
> 
> So who was the customer who was "threatened" ?  RMS ?

Read it for yourself:

<http://groups.google.com/groups?q=+wavefront+group:comp.lang.ada+author:dewar%40merv.cs.nyu.edu&hl=en&as_drrb=b&as_mind=29&as_minm=3&as_miny=1997&as_maxd=5&as_maxm=12&as_maxy=1997&rnum=1&selm=dewar.871738278%40merv&filter=0>

Specifically, Mr. Dewar said:

"If people started distributing wavefront versions freely, then w [sic]
would probably reluctantly decide to stop making them available, since
it would be clear that their distribution was harmful. That would be
too bad for the cases where they really solve a problem."

Since wavefronts were/are only sent to customers of ACT, it's not too
hard to figure out that this was a veiled threat to them about
exercising their right under the GPL to send me copies.

-- 
Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA  93556-1412
Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com>      Phone: (760) 499-9142
President, CEO                             Fax: (760) 499-9152
My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084  4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Wes Groleau]

Ronald Cole wrote:
> > So who was the customer who was "threatened" ?  RMS ?
> 
> Read it for yourself:
> Specifically, Mr. Dewar said:
> 
> "If people started distributing wavefront versions freely, then w [sic]
> would probably reluctantly decide to stop making them available, since
> it would be clear that their distribution was harmful. That would be
> too bad for the cases where they really solve a problem."

He said if something bad happens they might
reluctantly decide to prevent it.  You call
that a threat?

That is no more a threat than for me to consider
putting you in my killfile if your posts become
a waste of my time.

The only "threat" in that post is the hypothetical
threat that "some lawyer" is NOT making in the
next-to-last paragraph.

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Wes Groleau]

ACT would have to be pretty foolish to give untested
code to someone whose apparent mission in life is to
tell the world ACT is evil.

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Pat Rogers]

"Ronald Cole" <ronald@forte-intl.com> wrote in message
news:m37ks1crl3.fsf@yakisoba.forte-intl.com...
> Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen) writes:
> > In article <m3669o0y2u.fsf@yakisoba.forte-intl.com>, Ronald Cole
<ronald@forte-intl.com> writes:
> > > dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:
> > >> This is a fabrication. No such "threat" was made at any
> > >> time to any of our customers. We are not in the business
> > >> of threatening customers. This is simply a fantasy that
> > >> Mr. Cole has constructed (for what reasons I do not know).
> > >
> > > I still have our email discussion between you, me and rms from June
> > > 1997 where you clearly state that you considered having wavefront
> > > sources out in the public to be so dangerious that you would seriously
> > > consider not giving wavefront releases to customers who were
> > > exercising their GPL rights and giving them to me.  You specifically
> > > used the example of Stallman getting steamed that a Linux distribution
> > > released an internal version of gcc that he didn't intend for public
> > > consumption to support your position.
> >
> > So who was the customer who was "threatened" ?  RMS ?
>
> Read it for yourself:
>
>
<http://groups.google.com/groups?q=+wavefront+group:comp.lang.ada+author:dew
ar%40merv.cs.nyu.edu&hl=en&as_drrb=b&as_mind=29&as_minm=3&as_miny=1997&as_ma
xd=5&as_maxm=12&as_maxy=1997&rnum=1&selm=dewar.871738278%40merv&filter=0>
>
> Specifically, Mr. Dewar said:
>
> "If people started distributing wavefront versions freely, then w [sic]
> would probably reluctantly decide to stop making them available, since
> it would be clear that their distribution was harmful. That would be
> too bad for the cases where they really solve a problem."
>
> Since wavefronts were/are only sent to customers of ACT, it's not too
> hard to figure out that this was a veiled threat to them about
> exercising their right under the GPL to send me copies.

IMHO the post you cite doesn't support your assertion; it is interesting
that you have removed the rest of it.  For example, Dewar's very next
paragraph says:

"But as I said, this is a very small part of our support activity anyway
(sending out wavefront releases). So if we did decide to curtail the
distribution of wavefront release because of problems with uncontrolled
releases, then this would be nothing like "refusing to do business
with people" or anything like that. it would just be a matter of balancing
the needs of customers in certain situations with other needs, something
we have to do all the time."

Isn't this axe about ground down to nothing by now?


--
---
Patrick Rogers                       Consulting and Training in:
http://www.classwide.com          Real-Time/OO Languages
progers@classwide.com               Hard Deadline Schedulability Analysis
(281)648-3165                                 Software Fault Tolerance

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ronald Cole]

"Pat Rogers" <progers@classwide.com> writes:
> Isn't this axe about ground down to nothing by now?

Go read the entire thread.

-- 
Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA  93556-1412
Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com>      Phone: (760) 499-9142
President, CEO                             Fax: (760) 499-9152
My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084  4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ronald Cole]

Wes Groleau <wgroleau@usa.com> writes:
> He said if something bad happens they might
> reluctantly decide to prevent it.  You call
> that a threat?

No, he said that if wavefronts started getting around (i.e., ACT
customers were giving them out despite Mr. Dewar explicitly asking
them not to) then he would probably, but reluctantly, stop giving
out wavefronts (to ACT customers, since ACT doesn't give them out
to anyone else).

> That is no more a threat than for me to consider
> putting you in my killfile if your posts become
> a waste of my time.

If you don't think it's a threat, then how about volunteering to
provide me with wavefront sources?  I'm interested in comparing them
against what's currently in the gcc cvs tree.

> The only "threat" in that post is the hypothetical
> threat that "some lawyer" is NOT making in the
> next-to-last paragraph.

Well, it certainly scared an ACT customer who I had lined up to
provide me with wavefront source (because they also thought that open
development of GNAT was a good thing).

-- 
Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA  93556-1412
Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com>      Phone: (760) 499-9142
President, CEO                             Fax: (760) 499-9152
My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084  4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com> wrote in message news:<m3ofldb58t.fsf@yakisoba.forte-intl.com>...
> If you don't think it's a threat, then how about volunteering to
> provide me with wavefront sources?  I'm interested in comparing them
> against what's currently in the gcc cvs tree.


The only difference between the wavefront sources and
what is in the gcc cvs tree is that the latter is modified
to be compatible with GCC 3, while as our qualified
wavefronts are still GCC 2.8.1 based. Well that's not
quite right, typically the gcc cvs tree is a few days
ahead of the wavefronts, since there is typically a few
days delay in fully qualifying binary wavefronts. Although
it can sometimes be the other way round if we fall a few
days behind in keeping the trees synchronized. It can also
be the case that patches submitted to the gcc tree have not
been back syncrhonized into the act tree, but in general
the difference is not more than a few days.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Wes Groleau]

Ronald Cole wrote:
> If you don't think it's a threat, then how about volunteering to
> provide me with wavefront sources?  I'm interested in comparing them
> against what's currently in the gcc cvs tree.

You could be telling the truth, but I have none to give you.

Or you could be looking for more ammunition to twist for
your Dewar-bashing campaign, in which case I wouldn't give
them to you.

Either way, I have nothing else to offer you
on this matter--not even more words.

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ted Dennison]

In article <5ee5b646.0112052127.421f6d4@posting.google.com>, Robert Dewar
says...
>
>Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com> wrote in message news:<m3ofldb58t.fsf@yakisoba.forte-intl.com>...
>> If you don't think it's a threat, then how about volunteering to
>> provide me with wavefront sources?  I'm interested in comparing them
>> against what's currently in the gcc cvs tree.
>
>
>The only difference between the wavefront sources and
>what is in the gcc cvs tree is that the latter is modified
>to be compatible with GCC 3, while as our qualified
>wavefronts are still GCC 2.8.1 based. Well that's not
..
>days behind in keeping the trees synchronized. It can also
>be the case that patches submitted to the gcc tree have not
>been back syncrhonized into the act tree, but in general
>the difference is not more than a few days.

I originally had the same issue with the "wavefronts" that Ron had. However, now
that the official repository is the public gcc cvs tree, my level of caring
about ACT wavefronts has dropped to near zero. If someone wants an interim
version of Gnat, then the public gcc cvs tree is the place to go for it.
Internal ACT versions are just that: internal. I wouldn't want one now if it
were offered to me.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

No trees were killed in the sending of this message. 
However a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Simon Wright]

Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> writes:

> I originally had the same issue with the "wavefronts" that Ron
> had. However, now that the official repository is the public gcc cvs
> tree, my level of caring about ACT wavefronts has dropped to near
> zero. If someone wants an interim version of Gnat, then the public
> gcc cvs tree is the place to go for it.  Internal ACT versions are
> just that: internal. I wouldn't want one now if it were offered to
> me.

But wavefront ACT versions are _supported_ which is a huge deal (for
supported customers who have no time to, for instance, build NT or NT
x VxWorks compilers).

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Florian Weimer]

dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:

> Although it can sometimes be the other way round if we fall a few
> days behind in keeping the trees synchronized.

Do you really think "a few days behind" is an accurate description of
the current situation?

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message news:<dZNP7.51578$xS6.85115@www.newsranger.com>...
> If someone wants an interim
> version of Gnat, then the public gcc cvs tree is the 
> place to go for it.


Of course what would be nice to see is both Ron and T.E.D
devoting their efforts to helpful contributions to this
public tree. If they just spent a little bit of the effort
they spent on posting here on CLA on that worthy effort :-)

Actually we are getting lots of useful contributions, though not many
from the regulars on CLA.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Stephen Leake]

Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes:

> dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:
> 
> > Although it can sometimes be the other way round if we fall a few
> > days behind in keeping the trees synchronized.
> 
> Do you really think "a few days behind" is an accurate description of
> the current situation?

Since Robert is in a position to know, this seems a silly question.

I'll go out on a limb and guess that Florian is complaining that the
current public binary release of GNAT (3.13p) is 18 months behind the
GCC CVS tree. That is true. But I believe Robert was talking about
keeping the GCC CVS tree in sync with the internal GNAT development
tree (currently heading for a 3.15 release). I'm actually surprised
that ACT is doing that, but it should certainly satisfy anyone who
wants access to the "cutting edge" GNAT.

I hope ACT continues to make binary releases, at least for Windows and
Solaris, even if they are "way behind". The various Linux maintainers
could start making binary releases for their systems. Even if I want
the "latest" GNAT from the CVS tree, it helps tremendously to have a
known good binary to install first, since that is required to compile
the CVS release.

-- 
-- Stephe

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Ted Dennison]

In article <5ee5b646.0112061759.b60b970@posting.google.com>, Robert Dewar
says...
>Of course what would be nice to see is both Ron and T.E.D
>devoting their efforts to helpful contributions to this
>public tree. If they just spent a little bit of the effort
>they spent on posting here on CLA on that worthy effort :-)

I'd certianly like to help out in this effort, and indeed may one day do so.
But unfortuntately I have a day job and 2 kids (soon to be 3), and several other
Free Software projects ongoing. I have to be fairly judicious about how to use
the free 6 hours or so I get a week. I'm terribly sorry if you feel that this
has left Gnat out in the cold so far. I assure you its nothing personal.

Given all that, I actually have attempted one 3.0 gcc/Gnat build. Unfortunately
it was on a rather slow Win95 laptop. Let's say that isn't exactly the "ideal"
development enviroment. :-) I'm sure sometime I'll get around to trying it out
on a real system.

>Actually we are getting lots of useful contributions, though not many
>from the regulars on CLA.

I actually lurk from time to time in the gcc mailing list, and have indeed seen
lots of talk about submissions from non-ACT people, which is one of the reasons
I no longer have any concern about "wavefronts". Very few of these people are
folks who were not familiar to me from C.L.A. But I guess you can look at the
glass as half-empty if you like.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

No trees were killed in the sending of this message. 
However a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Florian Weimer]

Stephen Leake <stephen.a.leake.1@gsfc.nasa.gov> writes:

>> > Although it can sometimes be the other way round if we fall a few
>> > days behind in keeping the trees synchronized.
>> 
>> Do you really think "a few days behind" is an accurate description of
>> the current situation?
>
> Since Robert is in a position to know, this seems a silly question.

I'm a bit puzzled because he mentioned a change to the sources on
2001-11-07 which hasn't made it yet to the official tree.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> wrote in message news:<87snam210j.fsf@deneb.enyo.de>...
> Stephen Leake <stephen.a.leake.1@gsfc.nasa.gov> writes:
> 
> >> > Although it can sometimes be the other way round if we fall a few
> >> > days behind in keeping the trees synchronized.
> >> 
> >> Do you really think "a few days behind" is an accurate description of
> >> the current situation?
> >
> > Since Robert is in a position to know, this seems a silly question.
> 
> I'm a bit puzzled because he mentioned a change to the sources on
> 2001-11-07 which hasn't made it yet to the official tree.

Hard to comment unless you are a little less mysterious.
What change are you talking about.

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> wrote in message news:<87snam210j.fsf@deneb.enyo.de>...
> I'm a bit puzzled because he mentioned a change to the 
> sources on 2001-11-07 which hasn't made it yet to the 
> official tree.

By the way Florian is a CLA contributor who has made
significant contributions volunteering help on the
gnat tree at gnu.org, which is definitely appreciated,
and it will be nice to see more CLA readers getting
involved :-)

Re: GNAT and GCC 3.0

[Robert Dewar]

dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) wrote in message news:<5ee5b646.0112072025.53182fb2@posting.google.com>...
> Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> wrote in message news:<87snam210j.fsf@deneb.enyo.de>...
> > I'm a bit puzzled because he mentioned a change to the 
> > sources on 2001-11-07 which hasn't made it yet to the 
> > official tree.

Florian sent me a note identifying the change, and it is
an area where we have not quite decided the best way to
handle things in the gcc tree, so it is a known discrepancy
(it relates to the labeling of versions, i.e. FSF version
versus GNAT Pro version, and so is a natural point of
divergence between the two trees, but we would like to have
a method of keeping the trees identical, and that is what
we are working on. Another issue is what should be in the
bug reporting box on the various versions.