Re: status of Ada STL?

["Marin David Condic" <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org>]

So perhaps an alternative to having the vendors bundle some library up with
their compilers would be to have some one single library declared "The
Library" and vendors, academics, industrial users, newsgroups, and other
gadflies can all point to that and say "This is what everyone uses". That
certainly separates it from the language standard which I think can only
produce something very static and limited. But there's still a problem with
somehow or other giving it some aura of officialdom. Also, there's the
problem of if it isn't just sitting there when you get your Ada compiler
installed, its awful rough to, say, write a textbook about Ada that presumes
the student can just include XYZ and have it work. Not having it come with
the compiler risks having it be just one more of many available libraries of
stuff and that's not quite the same thing as what C++ and Java have right
now.

Still, it might be a way to *start*. Get a semi-official library going that
is at first independent of the compiler or standard and perhaps later if it
seems to be working well, it starts getting bundled with compilers (on
customer demand?) and might one day find its way into the standard, should
it be sufficiently well specified. Isn't this kind of how ASIS got built? (I
don't see why it couldn't perhaps start with some existing library and be
grown from there so long as the existing library was sound and met whatever
requirements were established.)

You're absolutely right about who is going to sponsor and fund it. It needs
to be driven by *someone* with some semi-official status or its just one
more library built by one more enthusiast. Assuming the vendors were at
least on board to the extent that they were willing to bless some effort as
"The Library" and were willing to drive the requirements somewhat, then the
rest is a problem of finding some organization to be the caretaker of the
project and some way of paying for it. SIGAda might be a reasonable
mechanism for being the caretaker and might even find some volunteer labor
for some of the work. (The problem with all-volunteer labor is, of course,
you can't count on getting anything done.) Universities might be other
candidates. As for funding, if it was written up properly, it might be
possible to get some government research money thrown at it. I think that if
there is a willingness on the part of the vendors and/or other major
stakeholders to push for something, it might just happen. Without that, it
will lack focus and never get done.

MDC
--
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
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Randy Brukardt <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote in message
news:upjr96ggnr4mb2@corp.supernews.com...
>
> The best suggestion I've seen here is to provide a semi-official library
> of code similar to Java's. This keeps the vendors out of it (beyond
> making sure that the code compiles). And the user is not mislead about
> the status of the code. The main question with this idea is who is going
> to sponser it and fund it? That's being actively studied -- hopefully a
> solution will be found.
>