Re: GNAT versions ( was :Ada compiler for PC?)

[bothner@cygnus.com (Per Bothner)]

Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> ... I suspect quite a few major features appeared in the EGCS
> tree before they were shipped to Cygnus customers.

In article <7g0bdf$3q9$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
Robert Dewar  <robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>That would be an interesting suspicion to back up. I know
>only of major features in the Cygnus tree that are not in EGCS.

Well, I can't think of a single Gcc feature, major or otherwise,
that was in our standard customer release before being in EGCS.
Note:  I am talking about the standard GNUPro product;  not
contracted deliverables made to a specific customer.  (Obviously,
if somebody pays for a new port to an unannounced chip, we are
not going to put into Egcs before it is announced!)  But in
general, customers do *not* get major features before Egcs.

Since we merge *from* Egcs to our internal tree, rather than
vice versa, the check-in policy at Cygnus is:  Nothing gets
into our internal tree unless it is in Egcs *or* specially
marked as being Cygnus only or "sanitized".  That should make
it obvious that the default is to check things into Egcs
first or at the same time.

>Yes, of course Cygnus drops developments to EGCS, no one
>is saying that they don't. It is just that, as in the case
>of GNAT, there is usually a lag between the development
>of new features and their dropping into EGCS.

As I have pointed out, this is generally not true.
It may be worth pointing out that Dewar's company ACT is a
competitor of Cygnus, though we have mostly kept apart.

>Indeed there are features in GNUpro that have not
>yet been put in EGCS. I am sure they all will be, just as
>all internal GNAT developments are eventually made public.

Well, some parts of our product are non-free, and there are no
plans to change that (though the mix of what is free and what
is non-free will of course change).  Specifically, Source
Navigator (which is a separate product from GNUPro) is
non-free, as is gdbtk (which I believe *is* part of GNUPro).

>Right now, GNAT is more analogous to how Cygnus handles
>GDB. That may change in the future, but Cygnus feels that
>since it does almost all the work on GDB currently, it is
>not obviously worth their while to invest resources in an
>EGCS like effort for GDB. That may well change in the
>future, if other parties start doing major work on GDB.

I don't think it is proper for you to say what "Cygnus
feels".  At the very least put in a "my guess is ...".

The reason EGCS was started was because things has reached a
crisis point.  This happened while the official Gcc maintainer
was working for ACT.  Gdb has also had problems the last year
with openness and timely releases;  we are working on improving this.
A public cvs repository is one possibility (but I am not in the
gdb group, so I cannot speak for them).
-- 
	--Per Bothner
Cygnus Solutions     bothner@cygnus.com     http://www.cygnus.com/~bothner