Re: Standard Library Interest?

[Larry Hazel <lhhazel@otelco.net>]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> Well, yes, that's pretty much compatible with the idea I've been putting 
> forward. If you have some group or organization overseeing some 
> updatable library, people could contribute what they thought would be 
> useful. The organization could arrive at some decision about its 
> suitability and include it if it seemed to warrant it. (They would be 
> playing the job of "Editor/Publisher" - work with a developer to get 
> something suitable and add it to the next scheduled release as deemed 
> necessary. That's how you'd resolve style issues and other things you 
> might care about, like documentation.) You'd have a release cycle with 
> sufficient frequency to give the language a means of rapidly reacting to 
> a changing world without locking something into the ARM that might prove 
> to be a "Bad Idea" or unstable or unproven. You get a more market-driven 
> language capability without absolute standardization (the ARM) or 
> absolute chaos (grabbing random libraries from the Internet.)
> 
> If the vendors are on board with it, they pick up new releases and 
> distribute them with their compilers. They'd have the final say about 
> what they wanted to accept. They'd be responsible if there were any 
> portability issues to resolve. (Hopefully, few.) Ultimately pieces that 
> are added might or might not make it into the ARM, but so what? You've 
> got source code and if you like it, you use it with some guarantee that 
> it is common across implementations. I don't see how this is 
> undesirable. You get more functionality in a portable and standard way. 
> Long term, it may be an ARM feature if it is popular and stable enough.
> 
> MDC
> 
> 
> Stephane Richard wrote:
> 
>>
>> Well yes 10 years is a long time....We'd need something like the Linux
>> system. By that I mean.  Some one develops a new thing, suggests it to
>> makers of Ada (like in linux they give it to the makers of linux) for
>> acceptance into the next release (which typically doesn't take 10 
>> years in
>> most cases).  by the end of 10 years if enough makers of Ada have it 
>> as part
>> of their compiler then the revision can't overlook it.  if it's that 
>> popular
>> aside some terminology changes (say you didn't use the underscore in your
>> names and Ada guidelines recommend you should, etc etc).  then it gets 
>> added
>> into the next revision.....
>>
>> I do agree that 10 years is a very long time and that might be part of 
>> the
>> reason which slows down Ada's progress on the popularity charts.  it's
>> strength (truely standard language) is also it's qeakness (way too long
>> revision period).  I would say either the revisions need to be closer
>> together (a year max instead of 10 years) or allow a principle of 
>> ammendment
>> to the standard that could be revised periodically and whatever makes 
>> it to
>> that revision would be part of the "official revisison".  or some 
>> system so
>> that we dont have to wait that long.
>>
>> hence the standard commity either need to be more present and 
>> accessible to
>> the Ada community, or form a team of members or non members that could do
>> this regular interval thing.
>>
> 
> 
Even if it were not distributed with compilers, having everything in one 
place as "The Ada Library" rather than bits and pieces here and there, 
it would be a great improvement over what we have now.