Re: GNAT GPL 2005 Edition is now available

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

Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes:
> GNAT 3.15p has no AMD64 support, and the tasking run-time is broken
> on multiprocessor systems on x86.  (Could be a kernel bug on this
> particular machine, I don't have many SMP systems to test,
> obviously.)

I have a dual Pentium II @300 MHz, where Ada tasking programs utilise
both processors without a problem (Debian Sarge, Linux 2.4.27, gnat
3.15p-12).

> GCC 4.0 has a wrong-code bug in enumeration types with holes.  I'm
> reluctant to invest in a rewrite of my (quite valid!) Ada code to work
> around this bug.  There appear to be some other issues with array
> range checks, but these are more subtle, and I haven't investigated
> them further.

Yes, this bug was reported recently on this newsgroup: ada/23836 on
GCC's bugzilla database.

> GCC 3.4 simply ICEs on my (valid) code.  Not investigated further.

gnat-3.4 still has many of the bugs from gnat 3.15p; solves a few,
adds a few.

> This will be painful for me because I cannot use your GNAT packages
> anymore.

You can use my packages for as long as you use Sarge :)

More seriously, your desire for support for amd64 is one good reason
to move forward.  GNAT GPL 2005 Edition is based on GCC 3.4.4 (with
several patches).  It may or may not ICE on your code like GCC 3.4
does.  I suggest you try it and decide for yourself which one suits
you best.

> But unless there's a perspective for de-facto support of GNAT (with
> regular releases, and new platforms such as AMD64), I expect that
> I'll have to rewrite the software anyway. 8-(

I will try to support whichever version of GNAT is chosen for Debian.
Both 3.4 and 4.0 support amd64, AFAIK.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.