Re: The GNU Ada compiler

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

Adrian Knoth <adi@thur.de> writes:
> Martin Krischik <krischik@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
>>> Do your packages for Suse replace the Gnat packages that Suse
>>> provides, or can they coexist?
>> I never ever would replace the SuSE packages - you need them to
>> compile the kernel!
>
> I think this is not the answer to the same question which arose for
> me yesterday: if the distribution ships a gnat package, why would
> one use yours?

Yes, and another question: do your packages include all the
distribution-specific patches, which are often necessary to compile
the kernel or glibc?

I appreciate your efforts, but my gut feeling is that they are not
very productive; it would be more worthwhile, IMHO, to just join the
existing maintenance teams of GCC in your distribution of choice, and
provide patches to their build scripts or to the compiler itself as
necessary.  This way, the default GNAT shipped by your distribution
would retain the ability to compile the kernel and glibc, and also
have good Ada and good multi-language support.

I would like to add that, in 2001, I switched from Red Hat to Debian
for precisely two reasons: no Ada support in Red Hat 8, and no
possibility that I could influence them.  And now, I do much more than
influence Ada in Debian :)

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.