Ada in Debian 5.0 "Lenny"

Ada in Debian 5.0 "Lenny"

[Ludovic Brenta]

Debian 5.0 "Lenny" is due for release in September and has been frozen
since the end of July[1] but, due to lack of time on my part, some Ada
packages didn't make the deadline and are now in unstable.  I
requested[2]
from the Debian release team an exception to the freeze so these packages
can migrate to Lenny and I am awaiting a response.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/07/msg00007.html
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2008/08/msg00702.html

The new default Ada compiler is gnat-4.3.  In addition to the many bug
fixes and enhancements in GCC 4.3.1[3], the version shipped with Debian
contains 19 bug fixes backported from the main line of development (GCC
4.4).  This is the result of Samuel Tardieu's outstanding work.  Debian
also pioneered support for mips, mipsel and ppc64 architectures thanks to
Xavier Grave, Aurelien Jarno and Andreas Jochens.  This support will be
included in GCC 4.4.  Finally, gnat-4.3 ships with two versions of the
Ada
run-time library: one using zero-cost exception handling (aka ZCX, both
static and shared libraries), and one using the setjump/longjump (SJLJ)
mechanism (static library only).

According to the popularity contest[4], gnat-4.1 users are already
migrating en masse to gnat-4.3.  I am very happy about this and I take it
as a personal encouragement to continue work on Debian.

[3]
http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?cmdtype=runnamed&namedcmd=Fixed%20in%204.3
[4]
http://people.debian.org/~igloo/popcon-graphs/index.php?packages=gnat%2C+gnat-4.1%2C+gnat-4.3&show_installed=on&want_legend=on&want_ticks=on&&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1

Packages recompiled with gnat-4.3 but no other changes:

* ada-reference-manual -- The standard describing the Ada 95 language
* adabrowse 4.0.2 -- HTML generator for Ada 95 library unit
specifications
* adacgi 1.6 -- Ada CGI interface
* libaunit 1.03 -- AUnit, a unit testing framework for Ada

Packages updated:

* adacontrol -- An Ada rules controller: 1.6r8 -> 1.9r4
* adasockets -- bindings for socket services in Ada: 1.8.4.7 -> 1.8.6
* asis -- Ada Semantic Interface Specification: 2005 -> 2007
* gnade! -- GNU Ada Database Environment: 1.6.1 -> 1.6.2
* gnat-gps! -- The GNAT Programming System: 4.0.1 -> 4.3 (prerelease)
* libaws -- Ada Web Server: 2.2 -> 2.5 (prerelease)
* libflorist! -- POSIX.5 interface to operating system services: 2006 ->
2008
* libgtkada2! -- Development files for libgtkada2: 2.8.1 -> 2.12.0
(prerelease)
* libtemplates-parser -- Ada library to parse files and replace variables
     with their values: 10.0+20060522 -> 11.1
* libtexttools -- Ada and C++ library for writing console applications:
     2.0.3 -> 2.0.5
* libxmlada -- XML/Ada, a full XML suite for Ada programmers: 2.2 -> 3.0

The packages marked ! above are awaiting approval to migrate into Lenny
before the release; they are now in unstable.

New Ada packages:

* ahven -- Unit test library for Ada: 1.2
* ghdl -- VHDL compiler/simulator using GCC technology: 0.26+svn98
* libalog -- Logging framework for Ada: 0.1
* plplot-ada -- Ada support for PLplot, a plotting library: 5.9.0
* topal -- Links Pine and GnuPG together: 68

Many thanks to Reto Buerki and Andrew Ross for these new packages.  (ghdl
and topal are not really new; they were present in Debian 3.1 "Sarge" but
not in 4.0 "Etch", and are re-added in 5.0 "Lenny").

The sad news is that Lenny will not support distributed programming in
Ada.  Xavier Grave has already explained why[5].

Packages removed:

gnat-glade -- GNAT Library for Ada Distributed Execution
gnat-glade-doc -- GNAT Library for Ada Distributed Execution

[5] Xavier Grave, "Ada in Debian: dropping support for the
    Distributed Systems Annex", comp.lang.ada, 2007-07-28.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.