Ada in Debian: gcc-4.1 4.1.0-2 has reached unstable

Ada in Debian: gcc-4.1 4.1.0-2 has reached unstable

[Ludovic Brenta]

The planned transition to GCC 4.1, outlined in the Debian Policy for
Ada[1], is making progress.  Today saw the upload of gcc-4.1 4.1.0-2,
which includes my first batch of patches ported from gnat 3.15p.  See
the changelog[2] for a summary of these changes.  With this upload, I
have now ported all the changes I made in gnat to the newer gnat-4.1.

Of course, there are problems, since this is the "unstable"
distribution.  In particular, 4.1.0-2 failed to build from source[3]
on the amd64 and sparc autobuilders[4] due to autoconf (which we in
Ada-land all know and love), and might fail on other architectures
too.  I think the FTBFS issue will be fixed in the next few days.  On
the good side, the packages are already available as prebuilt binaries
for i386, powerpc, and hppa.  Yes, if you have one of 'em HP9000 boxes
running Debian, you can now do Ada.  Ada on a Superdome, anyone?

[1] http://www.adaworld.com/debian/debian-ada-policy.html
[2] http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gcc-4.1/news/20060502T162915Z.html
[3] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=365780
[4] http://buildd.debian.org/build.php?pkg=gcc-4.1

Bug #365780 is release-critical because of its severity, "serious".
Therefore, gcc-4.1 4.1.0-2 will not migrate to Etch/testing; perhaps
4.1.0-3 will, if it fixes that bug (and that's very likely).  If you
find other bugs, release-critical or not, please report them.

The binary packages of particular interest to us on c.l.a are:

gnat-4.1
libgnat-4.1
libgnatvsn-dev
libgnatvsn4.1
libgnatprj-dev
libgnatprj4.1

*Looking forward*

My next steps will be to port the other packages, starting with asis
and glade, to gnat-4.1.  Then I will package the latest versions of
GtkAda and GPS, and the remaining packages after that will be piece of
cake.  When all that porting is done, I will then perform the official
big-bang transition by uploading a new version of the package
gcc-defaults so that the default Ada compiler becomes gnat-4.1.  I
anticipate that it will take another couple of months to complete the
transition, and that we'll be well in time for the release of Etch in
December this year.

Biarch is another major area that needs work.  Several people have
expressed interest on this newsgroup (hello Adrian).  Here is a
summary of the situation as I understand it; please correct me if I
got anything wrong:

a) not even AdaCore support biarch
b) there is currently no platform that offers a biarch GNAT
c) this is uncharted territory
d) I don't (yet) have a 64-bit laptop to work on
e) I have no interest, other than intellectual, in biarch

As a consequence, if nobody helps me, then Debian will not provide
biarch for Ada.  Nor will any other operating system, for that matter,
per b) above.  I am more than willing to coordinate and provide
advice, but I am not prepared to do the actual work.  I think it is
safer for Debian users if I concentrate on good uniarch packages
first, and then look at biarch, if I have spare time, in the
experimental distribution (i.e. it would not be in Etch).  If, OTOH,
several interested people band together and do a coordinated effort to
bring biarch to life, then we can have it in Etch.  Ideally, we'd need
at least one person for i386/amd64 and one person for powerpc/ppc64.

For uniarch, perspectives are more rosy.  I know that gnat-4.1 can be
made to work on amd64 and ppc64 with a little love and care.  I don't
know about other platforms, but since we now have hppa, anything is
possible :)

If you would like to help, please visit http://lists.debian.org and
send mail to debian-gcc@.  Patches are greatly appreciated.

Oh, one last thing: after the transition, I'm planning to drop
libcharles0 since gnat-4.1 provides Ada.Containers.  If anyone wants
to keep libcharles0 in Debian for compatibility reasons, please adopt
the package.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.