Ada in Debian: retaining old GMGPL libraries?

Ada in Debian: retaining old GMGPL libraries?

[Ludovic Brenta]

I am considering whether or not I should retain old versions of some
libraries, under GMGPL, in Debian.  Specifically, I am thinking of
GtkAda 2.4, XML/Ada 1.0 and AWS 2.0p.

I believe that, since these old versions are in Sarge under GMGPL, it
is legal for me to continue providing them alongside the newer, GPL
versions.

Technically, this requires more work on my part, and also makes life a
tad more difficult for developers who use the libraries in their
programs.

I *cannot* and *will not* support parallel versions of any libraries,
*unless* I have confidence that:

- people actually use both versions

- people who use the old GMGPL version will maintain that version (not
  the packaging: the library itself)

So, this is a survey of sorts.

If you use, and would like me to keep GtkAda 2.4, AWS 2.0p or XML/Ada
1.0 in Debian, please drop me a note.

If you are willing to help with the maintenance of this old version,
please drop me a note.

If you are willing to set up a project on SourceForge (or other) to
maintain the old version, please drop me a note.  I will not
participate in such projects myself, but will use them as a new
"upstream" source for the Debian packages.

Example: XML/Ada

I have just uploaded the new packages libxmlada2-dev and libxmlada2.
They contain XML/Ada 2.2, and I built them in such a way that they can
coexist on the same system as libxmlada1-dev and libxmlada1.  On a
system with both versions installed, there would be two project files
to choose from:

/usr/share/ada/adainclude/xmlada.gpr   (GMGPL)
/usr/share/ada/adainclude/xmlada2.gpr  (pure GPL)

two static libraries:

/usr/lib/libxmlada.a
/usr/lib/libxmlada2.a

and two shared libraries:

/usr/lib/libxmlada.so.1.0
/usr/lib/libxmlada.so.1 -> libxmlada.so.1.0
/usr/lib/libxmlada.so -> libxmlada.so.1.0
/usr/lib/libxmlada.so.2.2
/usr/lib/libxmlada.so.2 -> libxmlada.so.2.2
/usr/lib/libxmlada2.so -> libxmlada.so.2.2

As you can see, this scheme requires that programmers change their
project files or build scripts if they want to use the new library.
This is bad.

I still have to recompile libxmlada1 with GCC 4.1 and re-upload.  I
will do this if and only if 

- people actually use XML/Ada 1.0 on Debian
- people who use XML/Ada 1.0 will maintain that version

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.