Re: Gnat Free ?

[Jonathan Guthrie <jguthrie@weck.brokersys.com>]

dewarr@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> We are perfectly aware that there are enthusiasts who would like to get their
> hands on the latest technology, and don't care if it has problems. But that is
> not the public we are addressing in making public versions of GNAT available.

Actually, the biggest pain in the neck with GNAT is the fact that ACT
doesn't update the GCC patch files between public releases. 

A while back I was doing well, cruising through the Lovelace tutorial with
my very own copy of GNAT.  I had figured out how to get GNAT (based on GCC
2.7.1 or some such) to coexist with G77 (a version based on GCC 2.7.2.1)
and all was right with the world.

Then, I needed to run software that could only be built with GCC 2.8.1, so
I installed it.  I spent six weeks (or so) trying to get GNAT to build
with GCC 2.8.1.  I even looked in deja news to see if anyone else had
tried this, run into the same problem, and gotten an explanation for it.
(They had:  Robert Dewar said that "you are starting with the wrong
version of GCC."  Like the old Microsoft joke, that answer is absolutely
true and completely useless.  I judged that to ask for more information
would probably solicit a request that I pay for GNAT.  That would be
reasonable, but not productive.)

Now, I MUST run GCC 2.8.1.  That is not negotiable, but the only thing I
need GNAT for is learning Ada.  I continued to attempt to find the
solution, but the enthusiasm for the search, which had been waning before
I checked DejaNews, was almost completely gone.  Eventually, I concluded
that the only approach that was going to work was to wait for ACT to
release the next version of GNAT.  So I've waited and waited and waited.  
I've been patiently waiting for the release of GNAT 3.11P for six months.
(I've never made a peep about this before now.  I'm only saying this now
because it came up and because the end of the wait is in sight.  
Sometimes I wonder why I continue to wait.  Ada can NOT be a great enough
language to make all this waiting worthwhile.)

While I don't think there's anything wrong with only making a release of
the free compiler every once in a while, (I so rarely update compilers
without being forced to that I'd never notice,) I think that when you base
your compiler on somebody else's, you should accept the burden of making
sure that the available free release of your compiler works with any new
releases of the base compiler soon after the release of the new version of
that compiler.

-- 
Jonathan Guthrie (jguthrie@brokersys.com)
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