Re: EMACS Ada Mode Maintenance

[dewar@gnat.com]

In article <36b9f769.3385631@news.demon.co.uk>,
  john@assen.demon.co.uk.nospam (John McCabe) wrote:
> dewar@gnat.com wrote:
> Although I would stand by such a statement, mainly with
> respect to new features, there is a subtlety in this
> quote in that it doesn't state anywhere that general
> features of currently available GNU software should be
> removed and replaced with product specific code (I refer
> in particular of course to the use of gnatstub in
> ada-make-body).

If you want to know Richard Stallman's position here, it is
that any change to Ada mode should be evaluated ONLY with
respect to its effect on the users of GNU software. He
objects to any effort or consideration being given to users
of non-free software, so if you ask for a policy decision
here from the "official" source, you will in fact get a
rather definite view along these lines.

In this particular case, the issue is entirely whether the
stub facility is improved with respect to its use with
GNAT. This does not stop someone developing other code that
uses some other approach usable with another compiler, and
if this is also useful with GNAT, does not impede its
inclusion in the official Ada mode. In this particular
case, it seemed clear that the change to using gnatstub
improves the behavior of this feature in the GNU system,
and that therefore the change is beneficial to users of
the GNU system.

This is, always has been, and will continue to be, the
primary criterion by which changes to GNU software are
judged by the FSF. You sale that Rolf was reluctant to
make changes that were GNAT specific. In fact I suspect
that if Richard Stallman had know this, he might not have
been very happy with the situation.

But as I said in my last note, in practice, overall, I
think everyone, even those not using GNAT, will find that
having someone able to work on Ada mode who is fully
supported rather than doing it on a volunteer basis will
work out very well.

I suggest everyone watch and see how this works over the
next few months, and withold judgments till we have that
experience.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/       Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own