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From: dewar@gnat.com
Subject: Re: Status of GNAT 3.11p
Date: 1999/01/15
Date: 1999-01-15T00:00:00+00:00	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <77mbv9$7ur$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 77kjlm$bri$3@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk

In article <77kjlm$bri$3@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>,
  mgk25@cl.cam.ac.uk (Markus Kuhn) wrote:
> I have it already installed for Linux as a final beta
> tester and it works very nice. The 3.11p Linux version
> seems to have been ready for a long time but for some
> reason ACT do not want to publish it before they have
> completed the NT version.

Actually not really a long time, but rather what we
consider a reasonable beta test period. Our past experience
shows that once a version is out, it tends to proliferate
very fast, and so we wanted to wait for Markus and others
to report in, and indeed the fact that Markus says "it
works very nice" is just the kind of report we have been
waiting for (Markus reported in very promptly, thankyou,
Markus, some of the other testers needed a bit more time
:-)

We do want to release all the versions together, otherwise
we get lots of complaints about where is the xxx version

> I had to promise not to pass on my beta version, so don't
> ask me for it.

Just to be clear, we did not ask for such a promise (to do
so would be a violation of the GPL). We did tell Markus
that we prefer that he not distribute that version, and we
appreciate that he respects that wish, because if it did
have glitches then we definitely don't want a proliferation
of slightly different versions. The final 3.11p is
virtually identical to what Markus tested.

> but may be ACT can be convinced to do a short public beta
> test for the 3.11p Linux version until they have fixed
> their NT problems.

Well I am not sure there is such a think as a public beta
test, once a version is out, it is out, and there will be
thousands of copies of it around for ever :-)

But in any case, the beta testing for the 3.11p Linux
version is completed, and as I noted earlier today, will
be out early next week.

> It seems their main concern is a proliferation of too
> many different 3.11p versions that could result of a
> public beta test. I never understood this concern,
> because it is trivial to just call them
> gnat-3.11p-beta-990114.tar.gz or something
> like that for the beta test version of the day. Should be
> no problem if they use a decent revision control concept.
> Beta testers by definition do not mind anyway to install
> a new revision every morning.

Well yes, in the ideal world :-)

But in the real world, once a public version is out it is
really out. Mike Feldman puts it on the CD ROM for his book
(which is great by the way), it is on dozens of FTP sites
next day, and on thousands of machines the following day.
Such is the wonder of the internet.

You are right that beta testers should regard a beta
version as a test version, but in practice, there is not
much distinction made by 99.99% of users, it is simply the
latest (and therefore greatest?) version.

Anyway, this debate can be left moot for now, the Linux
version as well as many other versions will be out next
week with sources.

Markus is planning to setup a forum for interchange on the
Linux version, and we will be happy to work with him on
this, and for example contribute critical patches for
important bugs.

We are also contributing the 3.11p front end to the EGCS
project, with the hope that it can be intergrated into the
EGCS distribution. This will take a little bit of fiddling
but it should be basically fairly straightforward to mate
the GNAT front end with EGCS, since nearly all the critical
bug fixes and patches to gcc to make GNAT work properly
have already been picked up by EGCS.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies


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  parent reply	other threads:[~1999-01-15  0:00 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
1999-01-13  0:00 Future of Ada? Jim
1999-01-13  0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1999-01-14  0:00   ` Jim
1999-01-13  0:00 ` David Gillon
1999-01-13  0:00 ` E. Robert Tisdale
1999-01-14  0:00   ` Jeff Schweiger
1999-01-13  0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1999-01-14  0:00   ` Jim
1999-01-13  0:00 ` dennison
1999-01-13  0:00 ` Markus Kuhn
     [not found]   ` <m3iuebji2a.fsf@fred.muc.de>
1999-01-14  0:00     ` Status of GNAT 3.11p Markus Kuhn
1999-01-15  0:00       ` dewar
1999-01-15  0:00       ` dewar [this message]
1999-01-16  0:00   ` Future of Ada? Kevin
1999-01-18  0:00 ` news.oxy.com
1999-01-19  0:00   ` Rush Kester
1999-01-19  0:00     ` Kirk
1999-01-19  0:00       ` Paul Whittington
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