Re: CPAN style Ada repository

[Jacob Sparre Andersen <jacob@jacob-sparre.dk>]

Stephen Leake wrote:
> banjo <banjo@actrix.co.nz> writes:

>> Would there be interest in a Perl CPAN style Ada repository?
>>
>> Using the best ideas from Perl's CPAN, GitHub, Debian packages,
>> SourceForge, Savannah, and how Go uses git.

> Just for starters, it should be monotone, not git (or at least
> Mercurial). (We're Ada, we do things _right_, not just "popular").
>
>> bug tracking, mirrors, smoke-testing, packaging standards etc, 
>
> The only portable package is a tar.gz of source code. And even then,
> some people think they need .zip for windows, and you'd still get
> arguments about Makefiles vs .gpr files vs bash scripts vs DOS scripts
> ...
>
> Of course, every package must include an Emacs Ada mode 5.0 project
> file :).

:-)

I've for a long time used Debian as my main consolidated Ada repository,
but as Ada 2012 has some very nice features, which make for fewer bugs,
I manage with GNAT-GPL-2013 and manual installation of libraries.  As
soon as the Ada 2012 patches appear in the Debian "gnat" package, I
intend to switch back.

It would of course be nice with an easy-to-use operating system and
compiler independent supply of Ada tools and libraries.  But how can we
do it in a way, which doesn't make it Just Another Source of Ada
Libraries?

What would it take to make most of us Ada developers contribute to this
one system?

+ Easier than making Debian packages?  (Because I haven't gotten around
  to make even a single Ada based Debian package yet.)

+ Automagically works for "all" platforms?  (I don't feel like wasting
  time on testing if my sources work on platforms I don't use.)

+ Automagically works for "all" compilers?  (We can probably get away
  with only testing for different versions of GNAT, but why limit
  ourselves?)

>> to archive, package, distribute and promote high quality Ada modules.
>
> "high quality" is the rub; that takes expert reviewers, who have time
> to read and test _every_ submission. Not going to happen without
> funding, and lots of it.

I would probably not worry as much about reviewing the submissions as on
testing something as simple as how well they build (on which platforms,
with which compilers) and pass their own internal tests.

> Hands up; how many people think _every_ component in AdaCore's
> gnatcoll is "high quality" (hint; I'm not raising my hand). How much
> money do they spend on it?

No hands up here.  It doesn't look like they spend all that much money
on it.

> Much better to contribute to one of the existing packaging systems. It
> would be interesting to know how many people use each. I use Debian (a
> little bit) and Cygwin (a lot).

The challenge with that is that a contibution to either is only that.
If one could contribute to both at the same time, it would be nice.

IIRC somebody set up a Jenkins server for building and testing Ada
projects.  That might be a good place to work from.  No need to pick
specific version control repositories or anything.  Just publish and
demonstrate working build scripts for your Ada projects.

Greetings,

Jacob
-- 
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       http://billeder.sparre-andersen.dk/The_Faroe_Islands/