From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,f54972b30834b03d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@gnat.com Subject: Re: Status of GNAT 3.11p Date: 1999/01/15 Message-ID: <77mbv9$7ur$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 432732111 References: <369c6b78.7488219@news.nodak.edu> <77hsi5$oa4$1@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk> <77kjlm$bri$3@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x3.dejanews.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion X-Article-Creation-Date: Fri Jan 15 03:17:06 1999 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-01-15T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <77kjlm$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 -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own