Re: gnat GPL 2010 or gcc/ada?

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

Nasser M. Abbasi writes on comp.lang.ada:
> On 3/4/2011 5:05 PM, onox wrote:
>>
>> In my opinion Gentoo doesn't really have good Ada support. Latest
>> version of gnat-gcc is 4.3.4 and of gnat-gpl is 4.1.3.2008-r1. And
>> (according to the ChangeLog files) most Ada packages seem to be quite
>> old. I found it easier to just download gnat-gpl 2010 from ACT's
>> website. (If I could run VM's, I would develop in a Debian or *BSD VM)
>
> The above type of thing is what confuses me.
>
> I am now downloading gcc 4.5.1-2 (I use cygwin, and this is what
> it says the latest gcc for cygwin), but I also use linux on
> virtual PC sometimes.
>
> So, how does one know which version of "Ada" or GNAT the above has?
> i.e. compared to gnat GPL2010?  i.e. which one would be more recent?
>
> What is the reference point any way? I assume they are both Ada 2005.

Full details here:
http://people.debian.org/~lbrenta/debian-ada-policy.html#Background-information

> Another question: I would like to use gcc to build an Ada program,
> only because I know gcc is available everywhere, but if I use gnat GPL
> how do I make sure the same program will build with gcc if one of
> these 2 choices happened to be 'recent' than the other or one has more
> packages than the other?
>
> i.e. which gcc version does GNAT GPL 2010 correspond to?

See above.

> So that if I use gnat GPL, and send the code to someone, and they use
> gcc to compile, they will not get an errors?

Use the least common denominator, i.e. the oldest release you can live
with.

> one more thing: if I want to use GPS for editing/compiling/debugging
> an Ada program, do I have to use GNAT GPL compiler or can I use gcc
> with that?

You can use GCC.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.