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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,c23d953faf0768ca X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-04-13 13:54:04 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!cyclone.bc.net!HSNX.atgi.net!cyclone-sf.pbi.net!216.196.106.144!border2.nntp.sjc.giganews.com!border1.nntp.sjc.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local1.nntp.sjc.giganews.com!nntp.comcast.com!news.comcast.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:54:03 -0500 Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 16:54:03 -0400 From: "Robert I. Eachus" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Questions about Ada Core Technologies References: <87oeq4vkod.fsf@insalien.org> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <_tWdnRcoUor2zuHdRVn-tA@comcast.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.147.90.114 X-Trace: sv3-kVgOsPwQ08Vzx1PWzcusDQNHIi9vY/WvgvJwcTSxLlRjTOV+K+/BB5TOBou0Ct5pOpB3mPibceN/QCg!DCvDK1gMWIOkdo0vCYOnaqfLDuOhrJWQIjqlZtiik/XuC33n7L/E+JXz8azW6Q== X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: dmca@comcast.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:7058 Date: 2004-04-13T16:54:03-04:00 List-Id: Stephen Leake wrote: > Right. As I said, there is nothing in the customer contract with ACT > about not distributing GNAT. But they do informally request it. Actually, what ACT requests/recommends is not distributing wavefront versions. Wavefront versions are usually a response to a particular problem encountered by a (supported) user. As such they are less thoroughly tested than other versions of GNAT. What about the versions ending in a, not w? They are betwixt and between. In general if an a version gets to where it has a short buglist and no outstanding major problems, it gets converted to a p (public) version pretty quickly. What has been going on recently, as I understand it, is that ACT has versions which perform well on some platforms but fail on others. When you have customers with a support contract, you can insure that they have a variant that runs on the hardware (and OS) that customer uses. Once the 5.xx versions become stable, ACT will stop recommending that the public use 3.15p. Notice that the 5.xx versions are completely available to the public, just not recommended unless ACT has insured that they work in your environment. (And of course they are under no obligation to test those versions on non-supported hardware and OS configurations.) As for me, I have been staying with 3.15 because I want the software I write to be as widely distributable as possible. (I just went through a painful process with a failing disk. If it had failed completely I would have just gone to my last complete backup. But when it started failing I was able to do one last incremental backup--but it took days. Then I had to build a new disk, and apply all the increments. Since that disk held the partition I use for Ada development, I didn't want to change any libraries in the middle of all this.) -- Robert I. Eachus "The terrorist enemy holds no territory, defends no population, is unconstrained by rules of warfare, and respects no law of morality. Such an enemy cannot be deterred, contained, appeased or negotiated with. It can only be destroyed--and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the business at hand." -- Dick Cheney