Re: Debian Sarge: problem with libgnat.so

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

Martin Klaiber <martinkl@zedat.fu-berlin.de> writes:
> I was thinking of people who want to build the library but don't have
> gnatgcc.  I was trying out SuSE 8.x once, there was only gnatmake and
> gcc.  I don't know if it is still like that.

Unfortunately, I think it will be necessary to live with a
platform-specific name for the compiler driver.  Perhaps in the
future, all distributions will just use gcc, but there is no guarantee
of that.  Debian will use one of gcc or gcc-4.1 (gcc is an alias for
the default version, which may depend on the hardware architecture).

> Anyway, to hide libgnat from C-programmers is a good idea.  If I build
> the library like you said, the linking of the C-testprogram works, but
> when I want to run it, I get the following error:
>
>   ./test_c: relocation error: /usr/local/lib/libopensteuer.so.0: undefined symbol: program_error
>
>   ldd /usr/local/lib/libopensteuer.so
>         libgnat-3.15p.so.1 => /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i486-linux/2.8.1/adalib/libgnat-3.15p.so.1 (0x4001a000)
>         libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x401bb000)
>         libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x402ef000)
>         /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000)
>
>   ldd test_c
>         libopensteuer.so.0 => /usr/local/lib/libopensteuer.so.0 (0x40024000)
>         libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4003d000)
>         /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
>
> Is this only a problem with a wrong path?  If yes, which one is it?
> LD_LIBRARY_PATH includes the adalib-directory (/usr/lib/gcc-lib/...).

It seems that the dynamic linker finds all required library.  Now,
does your C program initialise libgnat properly?  Look into "adainit"
and "adafinal" in the GNAT user's guide.

> As we are talking about future releases: do you know if there are
> plans to include Juergen Pfeiffers AdaCurses from ncurses into one
> of the next releases?  In 2003 I had some mailcontact with the
> ncurses-maintainer, he kept vague in his answer.  Do you have any
> interest or plan to have a adacurses-package?

I considered doing it, but didn't because ncurses is on all Debian
architectures whereas gnat is only on i386, sparc and powerpc.

> I use them for a program I've written and compile them from source,
> which is no problem.  But to have a package would be also nice for
> people who work a lot on the console.  I've seen that Debian comes
> with libtexttools, but I haven't tried it out yet.  Would it be a
> better alternative?

Yes, libtexttools would be a better alternative, as it provides a
thicker abstraction over the console.  You can easily do windows,
menus and support the mouse with libtexxtools.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.