Re: Incomplete type generic formal interactions with Implicit_Dereference

[Jere <jhb.chat@gmail.com>]

On Sunday, January 21, 2018 at 5:04:18 AM UTC-5, Simon Wright wrote:
> Jere writes:
> 
> > There were actually two bugs.
> > One occurred on both GNAT GPL 2017 and GNAT FSF 7.2 on mingw64/msys2
> > x86_64 A second one only affected GNAT FSF 7.2 on mingw64/msys2 x86_64
> >
> > The odd thing is for the second bug, GNAT GPL is 6.3, while the FSF is
> > 7.2, yet the bug was fixed for the GPL version (6.3) and not the FSF
> > version (7.2).
> >
> > I also wasn't sure if I should have reported the bug to FSF directly
> > or to the maker of the mingw64 port of it.  Based on your reply, it
> > sounds like I should report that second one to FSF directly?  Given
> > that they don't seem to be incorporating bug fixes from GPL into FSF,
> > I am concerned that the first bug I submitted to Adacore may not get
> > fixed in the FSF version. It might, I just don't know since one of the
> > bugs is fixed in an earlier version of GNAT but not a later version.
> 
> Under those circumstances I'd report the FSF bugs to FSF (I've been
> tracking the GCC 8 developments so that I can leap in with macOS
> binaries ASAP after the release!, so I'd check whether the bug was fixed
> in 8).
> 
> AdaCore's timeline vs FSF isn't straighforward (there's some
> not-up-to-date info at [1]).
> 
> AdaCore produce a Pro release about once a year, which they base on a
> well-known GCC release (in the case of GNAT GPL 2017, 6.3). This
> involves changes to Ada front-end code, to the C back-end code, and to
> the interface between them (and of course to Ada & C in the runtime).
> 
> FSF GCC begins a new major release phase (currently for 8) also
> approximately once a year, not synced with AdaCore's releases. What
> AdaCore do (visibly, anyway) is to port the changes made in their own
> source tree at that time to the FSF tree; there's commonly a rush of
> commits at this point. After that, things slow down and bugs get fixed.
> 
> So one would expect some of the bugs still present in GCC 7 to have been
> fixed in the GPL 2017 release (and, hopefully, in GCC 8).
> 
> [1] https://people.debian.org/~lbrenta/debian-ada-policy.html#Timeline-of-GNAT-releases

Ok, that makes sense.  It had just seemed odd that 6.3 had a bug fixed when 
7.2 did not.  Now I understand.  I'll work on getting two bug reports to 
the FSF people.  I only have the windows version of FSF GNAT to test on, 
so I don't know if it affects other platforms, but my gut says it will 
probably be the same since they result in GNAT crashes.

Thanks!