From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,b5a423f2d50e9a6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2000-11-19 18:40:06 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-02!sn-xit-03!supernews.com!europa.netcrusader.net!207.172.3.44!feed2.news.rcn.net!rcn!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp2.deja.com!nnrp1.deja.com!not-for-mail From: Robert Dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Where is the Ada for LINUX Team site? Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 02:27:36 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Message-ID: <8va26k$bqb$1@nnrp1.deja.com> References: <8v9klo$rgl$1@neptunium.btinternet.com> <8v9vgk$v8j$06$1@news.t-online.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.240 X-Article-Creation-Date: Mon Nov 20 02:27:36 2000 GMT X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (OS/2; I) X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x60.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.240 X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:2247 Date: 2000-11-20T02:27:36+00:00 List-Id: In article <8v9vgk$v8j$06$1@news.t-online.com>, "Juergen Pfeifer" wrote: > But it has been brought to my attention that ACT and the FSF > see major deficiencies in the ALT packages. A little background here. Richard Stallman questioned why ACT was not providing RPM's directly. He worried that our failure to provide RPM's meant we were neglecting the needs of GNU/Linux. I explained that there were two problems. 1) There were some technical problems with shared libraries. The ALT folks felt that they were not severe enough, and decided that shared libraries were valuable enough not to worry too much about the problems. 2) Precise Ada compliance requires the provision of the alternative FSU threads package, since Linux threads are not Annex D compliant. The ALT folks decided that for simple use, that did not matter. THe current status is that problem 1) has now been solved in the latest GNAT technology, but problem 2) remains. I think here at ACT we quite understand decision 2) above, and it seems just fine to provide these RPM's with limited capability for the purposes for which they were being provided, but I explained to Richard that we need at ACT to be distributing a fully compliant version. We will study the issues of providing RPM's with both threads packages, and we think it can probably be done for the next release of GNAT now that problem 1) is solved (problem 1 was a show stopper at previous points for ACT provision of RPM's). But to be absolutely clear, we always felt that the RPM's provided at the ALT site have been very useful to a lot of people, and have always pointed users of the public version of GNAT in that direction. I know of no post from the FSF that could even possibly be construed as saying that there were major deficiencies in the ALT packaging. I have to wonder if Juergen actually read the thread in question. If anyone was being criticized in this thread it was ACT for *not* providing these RPM's :-) > All these discussions have been done behind my back > without involving me. There seems to be an ongoing discussion > of GNAT packaging issues where ALT is not involved These discussions were on the main gnu mailing list, open to participation by any interested parties (this is a very large list, with lots of people being involved), "behind my back" is a bit of an odd description of discussions happening on the GNU list, given you decided not to participate in this list, which is the main place that issues of this kind are discussed. > any my mail offering to transfer our packaging > knowledge remained unanswered. Well I must say I am a bit non-plussed by this! I received a friendly message from Juergen on last Monday morning. I have not answered yet, because last week was SigAda, and a lot of email is backed up from being away. In that message he offers to help us with RPM technology, and indeed that will be very helpful. > As I'm doing this as hobby the least thing I'm interested in > is politics, flaming and FUD. I really did not see anything vaguely like politics, flaming or FUD on the list, so I am a bit of a loss here. > Withdrawing my contribution is the easiest way for me to step > out of the fireline. Well of course anyone can withdraw their contribution, but I definitely fail to see any fireline here (anyone who likes is welcome to checkout the threads in question -- actually I think it is quite healthy that active discussions of GNAT and how it should be handled in the framework of the standard gnu/gcc distributions is very healthy!) Juergen, I think you should read the thread in question, and I think you will find that it has been mischaracterized to you! > It has also the advantage that people can now start from > scratch without a need to take care of an existing and > established packaging scheme. I am not sure of what "take care of" here means. Most certainly we won't start from scratch in the sense of ignoring what has already been done. At the same time, we do need to figure out how to deal with the issue of the multiple thread libraries. Although most people couldn't care less, we care that the Ada compiler that is part of the GNU/Linux system should indeed be fully conforming to the standard. Hopefully once the transition to the new public tree (which will of course be 2.9x/3.0 based) is complete, many of these problems will disappear. We are also hoping that Linux Threads can be fixed to solve the scheduling problems Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.