Re: One united Ada policy for all Linux distributions?

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

Further musings on this hypothetical "unified" policy:

- The policy would have to mandate package names so they are the same
across distributions.

- The policy would have to mandate a minimal set of packages that must
be provided in all distributions.

- For this, the policy for package names might conflict with
distribution-wide policies about package names.  For example, in
Debian, detached debugging symbols must be in packages with names
ending with -dbg while Fedora uses -debuginfo instead.  Also the
Fedora -debuginfo packages must contain the sources while the Debian -
dbg packages may not.

- The package names must change when the ALI files change (the Debian
Policy for Ada explains why in detail; this is not specific to Debian
but is a consequence of the Ada language definition, so must apply to
all distributions).

- The release cycles are different for all distributions.  Therefore,
at any point in time, each distribution would provide a different
collection of the compiler and of all libraries, using different
package names.  This may or may not have an impact on user programs
and compilation commands.

- Therefore, a grand unified, cross-distribution policy for Ada is
theoretically impossible; only a minimalistic policy would be
possible.

- The closest thing we have currently is GNAT GPL Edition: it is cross-
platform and minimalistic (compiler, IDE, some tools and a small
selection of libraries in source-only form).

--
Ludovic Brenta.