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 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: a07f3367d7,a19f7b11143e52d2 X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!k31g2000vbu.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Ludovic Brenta Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: One united Ada policy for all Linux distributions? Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 02:32:40 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: <8b775424-6d49-4fc1-8f9d-f1837d75371e@e21g2000vbl.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 153.98.68.197 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: posting.google.com 1274175160 11524 127.0.0.1 (18 May 2010 09:32:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 09:32:40 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: k31g2000vbu.googlegroups.com; posting-host=153.98.68.197; posting-account=pcLQNgkAAAD9TrXkhkIgiY6-MDtJjIlC User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009012111 Red Hat/3.0.6-1.el5 Firefox/3.0.6,gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:11709 Date: 2010-05-18T02:32:40-07:00 List-Id: 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.