Re: Standard Library Interest?

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> Georg Bauhaus wrote:
>  >
>  > In the real world? After all, afaik, most compilers don't run on bare
>  > hardware, so having to maintain an OS, using non-Ada system
>  > libraries, is not uncommon? As is using and files, and a repository,
>  > and compilation options, and cross compilers, and version changes,
>  > and so on... So using one or more additional libraries of the BLAS
>  > kind might add little more than O(n) complexity, when changes in your
>  > Ada setup do not affect your Fortran setup.
> 
> That's not how its done. At least not in my real world. :-) Selecting a
> compiler, fitting something into our whole release process and getting
> code into an embedded processor is an incredibly non-trivial exercise.
> Saying "O.K. here is some Fortran - go get a suitable Fortran compiler
> and marry it up with your process & get it into the control..." is a
> non-starter. (And then we could talk about C libraries, C++ libraries,
> Java libraries, etc., etc., etc. The answer is "No.") We could toss into
> the mix any sort of licensing problems if you'd like, but basically it
> doesn't impact the "Hell No!" answer I'd already get by any significant
> amount.
> 
> I can use Ada libraries much more easily - especially if its a
> compiler-provided package.

And one such way to get it there, is to write/mangle packages to
work with GNAT in a "ready to go" fashion (partly to help ourselves,
partly to help ACT, who are helping us).

If we do this successfully, then ACT's competitors will want to
port the GNAT library to work with their version of the compiler.
In effect, this will simply happen as a natural result of an
initial and ongoing effort.

What will be key here(!), is to license the sources in such a way
that they can do this, without involving lawyers. If the lawyers
have to get involved, then you may never see the light of day
from the vendors on this.

Since this is a difficult area, I think you'll need to segment the
naming space such that this is easy to subdivide. For example,
GPL'd code could fall into a GPL.* and/or GPL2.* hierarching, while
public domain stuff could be under a PD.* hierarchy.

Warren.