Re: Debian Family, GNAT version map

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

Dmitry A. Kazakov writes:
> On Sun, 19 Aug 2012 22:39:56 +0200, Ludovic Brenta wrote:
>> I suggest you concentrate on one thing and only one, then.  If you
>> are interested in Debian packaging, fine, let that be your one area
>> of expertise.  If you'd rather learn Ada and develop programs with
>> it, I suggest you install Debian stable (possibly in a chroot or
>> VirtualBox) and forget about all these pesky issues.  I've decided to
>> concentrate on packaging precisely so that others, especially
>> beginners, can concentrate on programming.
>
> Absolutely. Packaged Ada for Debian and Fedora is a great relief to
> the situation of not so distant times when GNAT GPL was the only, very
> uncomfortable, option for Linux.
>
> Yet, there is still the problem that people wishing to make their work
> available to public must nonetheless dive deep down into the mess of
> dbpkg and rpmbuild. Something should be done about it. If we could not
> bring Linux Ada policies in order, we should have some backend for the
> GPR which would automate packaging.

In the mean time, here is my advice for upstream authors of free
software: don't do packaging at all.  Instead, do like the FSF and
provide only the sources of your software; let specialized packagers do
the rest.  Make their job as easy as possible:

- avoid recursive Makefiles
- use GNAT project files (if you use GNAT)
- do not include copies of third-party software in your software
  (instead, document which third-party software is required and where to
  get it).
- collaborate with them by reviewing and accepting patches
- use a public version control system
- use a public bug tracking system
- use a public mailing list with searchable archives

Your "cross-platform" distribution should therefore consist of sources
and very simple instructions for building them.

A common, cross-platform policy for Ada would be desirable.  Debian and
Fedora have already started to collaborate towards a common directory
structure (to be implemented, on Debian's side, in the relase after
Debian 7 "Wheezy").  But even with a common policy, other things are
likely to make packages incompatible at some level anyway.  For example
various distributions might choose different sets of packages to
include; different versions of GCC as the default compiler; all combined
with different release schedules.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.