Re: GNAT in Debian, heads up

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

I would like to add:

Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> writes:
> Stanislav Tsekhmistroh <stas@kometalab.com.ua> writes:
>> What is the preference - to fix/develop/package FSF GNAT or ACT
>> GNAT 3.15p?

It depends on your goals.  If you just want to write Ada software, I
recommend using Debian Sarge and gnat 3.15p-12.  You will have the
full complement of tools and libraries available to you, and no
"moving target" problem for another 14 months at least.  If you want
to work on the Debian packages for the next release of Debian, you are
most welcome; see below.

>> And what help is needed most of all?

Since I'm planning to start transitioning to GCC 4.1 in a month or so,
now would be a good time to learn the internals of how the gcc-4.0 and
gcc-snapshot packages are built.  The build scripts are fairly
complex, because they have to take care of 8 languages, 12 platforms,
and hundreds of patches.  Later, I will need help with:

* porting relevant patches to gnat-4.1 (from gnat): symbolic tracebacks,
  bug fixes, libgnatprj, etc;

* supporting biarch where it makes sense (especially powerpc64 and
  amd64)

* building gnat-gps 3.0

* porting asis and glade to gnat-4.1

* rebuilding all other packages with the new compiler

in that order.  This will take several months to achieve.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.