Re: JAVA and ADA JGNAT

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <86kpbu$aik1@news.cis.okstate.edu>,
  dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org wrote:
> While ACT's lack of openness compared to those projects
> means a beta release wouldn't help ACT as much as it does
> Linus and the GCC team, I can't see why it would hurt more
> then it does there.

Actually I think part of what goes on here is that ACT is
*more* open than a lot of the Linux and GCC development.
Take GCC, it is no secret that Cygnus does a LOT of GCC
development that is closely held before being made public
and often closely held for a long time. The same is true
of course for Linux developments at Redhat. The difference
is that we are quite open about the general status of our
internal developments, and we share roadmaps.

It's never helpful to have testing jump too far ahead of
development. In the case of JGNAT, the appropriate stage
for the last couple of months has been to have a selected
small number of beta testers kicking the tires.

The next step will be a general beta release, that corresponds
to the sort of thing David Starner is talking about. Note that
David has absolutely zero knowledge of the state of JGNAT right
now, so he is hardly in a position to make a judgment on the
right point at which to start general beta testing.

If David is saying that ALL developments should be made
completely open day by day, all I can say is that I don't know
of many open source or free software development projects that
work that way, with the possible exception of GNOME (and a
number of small scale projects). I definitely think that would
not be helpful to GNAT users. Yes, it might be fun for a few
enthusiasts and hobbyists, but the confusion of having lots
and lots of versions of GNAT around, most of them being works
in progress that were non-functional would not in our judgment
be helpful to the general Ada community, and that is our
primary constituency as far as the public release goes.

We certainly are NOT waiting until JGNAT is 100% finished and
validated and bug free etc. Indeed the coming public release
will very definitely still be a beta version as far as we are
concerned.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies


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