Re: Gnat 2.06 Ada95 (unix) File format????

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Ronald Cole said

"I often wonder why people want to use GNAT at all for anything
serious...  After all, the current release will be an old, stale,
dysfunctional piece of shit and completely disowned by Robert Dewar
immediately after the next release!  (or so he keeps telling the bloke
who keeps producing the Ada CD-ROM set a version or two behind...)"

First of all, the particular issue here was the use of GNAT 2.06 which
is ten versions back, and *really* out of date, and by comparison with
the current versions, so far back as to not be worth the effort, remember
that unlike many other software products, the update charge is $0, so there
is really no reason to be that far back.

As far as the CD-ROM set goes, the constant advertisement we see for this
"ADA CD-ROM Set" is always for a very out of date version, and by comparison
you will do much better to go with Walnut Creak, who, at very reasonable
prices, keeps a much more up to date product.

Finally, for unsupported users, we generally expect people to make the
effort of getting the latest version, given it is free. 

If on the other hand, you are a customer of ACT, then we can perfectly
well accomodate you baselining on earlier versions of the compiler, and
by no means disown previous versions. It is just that this base lining
support of older versions is not something we provide for free.

People who want to use GNAT for "anything serious" should either get
support, or be prepared to provide their own support. They should not
expect free support for old versions, or for that matter for the current
version. ACT continues to provide freely available versions of GNAT, but
does NOT provide free support! 

People often compare what they can get for free with GNAT with what they
can get by paying $$$ to a proprietary vendor. That's really an apples
and oranges comparison! Either compare what you can get for free from
GNAT and the proprietary vendor, or compare what you can get (includin
support that you can contract for) by paying whatever.

At ACT, we generally have two recommendations to customers. First, only
choose GNAT if it is the best tool for the job, and if the support you
can get meets your support requirements. Don't choose on the basis of
price alone if you have a mission critical project. Of course the fact
that GNAT is free to obtain means that you can spend your resources on
support (the cost of many proprietary compiler systems will pay not only
for a standard support contract with ACT, but will allow you to work out
a partnership support agreement, with onsite consulting, where we work
with you to guarantee success).

Second, we do not recommend the use of free unsupported software for any
serious task. This is not just a matter of wanting to sell our support
services (which of course we do), but more that we do not want to see
people trying to use GNAT and failing, that does no one any good, and
using unsupported software definitely increases risks. It is not just
a matter of running into blocking bugs, but just in general running into
roaldblocks that you may need help in removing. Quite often, super high
priority blocking bugs turn out to be errors in customer's code that we
have been successful in helping to sort out, which is part of 
working together, and is part of our model of support.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies