Open source Ada OS?

Open source Ada OS?

[R. Tyler Croy]

I've seen MaRTE OS which has source available, the development isn't really
conducted in a large open SVN/Git repo as far as I can tell.


Are there any projects incorporate Ada with an open source operating system,
the Debian/kFreeBSD project comes to mind.



-- 
- R. Tyler Croy
--------------------------------------
    Code: http://github.com/rtyler

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2011-01-25, R. Tyler Croy <tyler@linux.com> wrote:
> I've seen MaRTE OS which has source available, the development isn't really
> conducted in a large open SVN/Git repo as far as I can tell.
>
>
> Are there any projects incorporate Ada with an open source operating system,
> the Debian/kFreeBSD project comes to mind.
>

I am not sure here if you are asking for a OS written in Ada, or if you
are looking for a OS which, while written in some other language, actively
supports Ada for applications.

If it's the latter, I will point you to RTEMS, which, while written in C,
actively supports writing Ada applications to run under it.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[R. Tyler Croy]

Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-earth.ufp> wrote:
> On 2011-01-25, R. Tyler Croy <tyler@linux.com> wrote:
>> I've seen MaRTE OS which has source available, the development isn't really
>> conducted in a large open SVN/Git repo as far as I can tell.
>>
>>
>> Are there any projects incorporate Ada with an open source operating system,
>> the Debian/kFreeBSD project comes to mind.
>>
> 
> I am not sure here if you are asking for a OS written in Ada, or if you
> are looking for a OS which, while written in some other language, actively
> supports Ada for applications.
> 
> If it's the latter, I will point you to RTEMS, which, while written in C,
> actively supports writing Ada applications to run under it.

To be honest, either or would be sufficiently interesting :)

The AuroraUX project seems entirely dead at this point, but I was hoping there
would be some OS-level project still alive in the open source community that
used Ada at its core (kernel, userland or both).


-- 
- R. Tyler Croy
--------------------------------------
    Code: http://github.com/rtyler

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[anon]

In <4d3f3be3$0$22088$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>, "R. Tyler Croy" <tyler@linux.com> writes:
>I've seen MaRTE OS which has source available, the development isn't really
>conducted in a large open SVN/Git repo as far as I can tell.
>
>
>Are there any projects incorporate Ada with an open source operating system,
>the Debian/kFreeBSD project comes to mind.
>
>
>
>-- 
>- R. Tyler Croy
>--------------------------------------
>    Code: http://github.com/rtyler


Most open OS that use CVS/SVN/GIT are based on BSD or LINUX or the AT&T 
old OS system. 

And before complaining about Ada OSs, remember Linux is a single file 
and to obtain its source, one must download a single archived file. Linux 
does not use CVS/SVN/GIT.

As for MaTRE/Openravencar/RTERM are OS for Real_Time applications with 
usage of Posix design. And all three of these OS have some of the build-in 
libraries written in C based on the Utah OSKIT. So, these OSs may share the 
design concept of openSource but they do not care to spend their time in 
maintaining a source tree as other openSource OS do. Because when a 
maintainer changes one line in a source file to fix a bug it may cause 
changes in 100s of other files. So to maintain the correctness of the OS it is 
better bundle the source files into a single archived file and this process 
decreases the maintaining and download time as well as traffic cost. 

And not all of the openSource OS are GCC version 2 or 3 some have modified 
GCC or modified BSD or even their own license that may require the person 
downloading to accept the license before downloading.

If you look at sourceforge you will see a lot of packages do not fully use the 
CVS/SVN concept due to the fact that the maintainer choose not to. That way 
if you download a package you are suppose to get all files required including 
the license.

And a final note: openSource is a great concept but it is not a Prefect 
concept. Because there is no Perfect concept only what works for that 
group of designer at that time. And CVS/SVN/GIT is not perfect either 
it is just what some use todays to obtain files. Its better to just 
download the package instead of complaining about hot it storage on the 
hosting computer.

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Wed, 26 Jan 2011 01:37:13 +0100, <anon@att.net> a écrit:
> That way if you download a package you are suppose to
> get all files required including the license.
Sounds plausible.

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Ludovic Brenta]

anon wrote on comp.lang.ada:
> Most open OS that use CVS/SVN/GIT are based on BSD or LINUX or the AT&T
> old OS system.
>
> And before complaining about Ada OSs, remember Linux is a single file
> and to obtain its source, one must download a single archived file. Linux
> does not use CVS/SVN/GIT.

You seem to live back in 2003. Linus Torvalds created git specifically
so he could maintain the sources of Linux. The Linux developers have
been using git exclusively since then. See http://git.kernel.org.

> As for MaTRE/Openravencar/RTERM are OS for Real_Time applications with
> usage of Posix design. And all three of these OS have some of the build-in
> libraries written in C based on the Utah OSKIT. So, these OSs may share the
> design concept of openSource but they do not care to spend their time in
> maintaining a source tree as other openSource OS do. Because when a
> maintainer changes one line in a source file to fix a bug it may cause
> changes in 100s of other files. So to maintain the correctness of the OS it is
> better bundle the source files into a single archived file and this process
> decreases the maintaining and download time as well as traffic cost.

If changing one file implies changing 100 other files, then the
software is badly designed. That has nothing to do with whether a
version control system should or should not be used. Note that proper
VCSs treat the entire source tree as one entity, so they allow you to
record changes to 100 files in one atomic operation. Git, Monotone,
Bazaar, Mercurial, Fossil all have this property. Heck, even
Subversion has it.

> And not all of the openSource OS are GCC version 2 or 3 some have modified
> GCC or modified BSD or even their own license that may require the person
> downloading to accept the license before downloading.

So?

> If you look at sourceforge you will see a lot of packages do not fully use the
> CVS/SVN concept due to the fact that the maintainer choose not to. That way
> if you download a package you are suppose to get all files required including
> the license.

Tarballs are OK but not required.
A version control system is OK but not required.
Having both is good.

> And a final note: openSource is a great concept but it is not a Prefect
> concept. Because there is no Perfect concept only what works for that
> group of designer at that time. And CVS/SVN/GIT is not perfect either
> it is just what some use todays to obtain files.

No, it is not "just" to obtain files. A version control system is
supposed to control the versioning(!). With a version control system,
you can obtain the software before it is officially released as
tarballs, you can use bisection to find when a bug was introduced, you
can backport bug fixes. You cannot do these things with "just" a
tarball.

> Its better to just download the package instead of complaining about hot it storage on the
> hosting computer.

It is better only if the release tarballs are complete and free of
bugs and if you do not need any functionality that has not been
released yet.

--
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Wed, 26 Jan 2011 09:36:57 +0100, Ludovic Brenta  
<ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> a écrit:
> you can backport bug fixes. You cannot do these things with "just" a
> tarball.
That's more diff (or like) than CVS which helps here.

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Ludovic Brenta]

Yannick Duchêne wrote on comp.lang.ada:
> Le Wed, 26 Jan 2011 09:36:57 +0100, Ludovic Brenta  
> <ludo...@ludovic-brenta.org> a écrit:
>> you can backport bug fixes. You cannot do these things with "just" a tarball.
>
> That's more diff (or like) than CVS which helps here.

Wrong. If you do a diff between two releases of GCC (say, 4.4.3 and
4.4.4) the result is literally hundreds of thousands of lines long
(even between minor, bug-fix-only releases), so unusable for a human.
In contrast, if you browse the version control log, you get a summary,
with explanations and bug numbers, of the changes; then you can narrow
your "diff" to the commits that you are interested in.

CVS would not even help do that because CVS, being rubbish, has per-
file histories as opposed to per-project history.

What you say might be true in a few particular cases with severe
restrictions such as SLOC count < 10_000 and developer_count < 5. In
the general case, a proper version control system is, quite simply,
vital.

Note: I do not even bother to create tarballs of the software that I
publish; my version control system does that for me automatically, see
http://www.ada-france.org:8081.

--
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Randy Brukardt]

"Ludovic Brenta" <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote in message 
news:b1da7195-8f26-463e-a297-195131a615f0@j32g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
...
>CVS would not even help do that because CVS, being rubbish, has per-
>file histories as opposed to per-project history.

Per-project history is also rubbish. I've never seen any version control 
system that actually would solve my problems rather than replacing those 
problems with a large set of new ones.

In the entire history of RRSoftware, there have only been two projects: 
Janus/Ada and Claw (ignoring a few hobbyist things). But these aren't 
monolithic entities. Janus/Ada, especially, over its history consists of a 
dozen or so separate tools, several in multiple parts, targetting about 25 
different targets. (Many of those targets are obsolete now.) Different 
targets were/are released at different times. If you treated those as 
*separate* projects, then all of the shared files (the majority) end up 
duplicated; if you treat those as *one* project, then you lose the ability 
to have separate releases for different part of the project. And in either 
case, there is no automated support for files that are related (and need to 
be kept consistent) but have different contents. (An example of this latter 
is the target description packages; these all contain a set of types and 
constants whose names have to be the same but whose definitions are 
different for each target. Some also contain subprograms with different 
bodies for different targets.)

A proper version control system would provide automatic warnings to the 
owner of a file/subproject/whatever when a related file needs to be changed. 
No such thing existed (or exists, so far as I can tell), so we built our own 
as a front-end to PVCS (later converted to CVS). That just uses CVS as a 
fancy difference engine; file relationships are kept in our manager. The 
problem, of course is that the thing is fragile and monolithic.

But none of the new VCs make any serious attempt to solve this problem. 
Branching would do it if there was a way to keep multiple ends active at the 
same time, without restrictions, and in additional kept track of when one 
end is out-of-date with the others.

Merging, however is never a solution. It just moves the problem from 
whereever it is now to the merge process. And automated merging is a 
disaster waiting to happen (and it happens often in my experience) - 
different targets get merged, bug fixes disappear, and the like. And manual 
merging is not a solution: it is just too time-consuming.

A related issue is "freshening" of working directories. I never, ever want 
to trust that what is in the VC is correct. It *ought* to be, but it often 
isn't and as such I never want to assume it is correct. Thus getting of 
files from the VC must query whenever it is about to change a file and ask 
for approval (that process has saved me many times from reintroducing bugs).

Finally, like all worthwhile programming tools, it has to be written in Ada. 
:-) That way, *I* can port it to the targets I need it to run on, I can fix 
it if necessary, and so on.

OK, the last is much less of a requirement than the others, but I do have 
much less trust in software not written in Ada. I use some of course because 
I simply don't have time to write my own OS, browser, and accounting 
package. (I wish I did.)

                      Randy.

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Edward Fish]

Randy,
  It sounds almost like you want the ability to:
	a) Define a collection of files; (not a true set, as duplicate
[names] might be in it)
	b) Have the ability to 'subset' this collection; (this would be your
[sub-]project)
	c) Associate from the set in 'b' files from 'a'; (allowing different
bodies to be in different projects)
	d) Have changes to some files {the bodies} update only their
associated file from 'a'.

Something like this psudo-ada:
 x86_Compiler : Project:=
( "Compiler.A*","Frontend.A*","Backend.ADS","Backend.ADB" => "[INTEL]-
Backend.ADB" );

Is this an accurate description of what you want?

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Randy Brukardt]

That's surely part of it. But I think it really needs some mechanism to keep 
the common parts of files in synch without much manual intervention. That 
seems to be a tough problem; C systems often use macros and conditional 
compilation to deal with this, but that leads to a mess of hard to maintain 
code. Ada uses separate bodies instead, which is generally better. But it 
has the problem that if the specification changes, you have to manually 
change the matching specifications in all of the bodies in the same way. And 
this is just busywork; while you still need to inspect the actual body code, 
the specifications are pain. Similarly, in those "unshared" bodies, it is 
common that there is a routine or three that are the same for most (or even 
all) of those bodies; changing those more than once is a pain.

I suspect that a scheme using structured comments would do the trick, but 
clearly such a system has to be Ada-aware (more generally, aware of the 
source language). Even better would be a GUI that was aware of that and 
automatically made the changes to parts of files, assembling the entire file 
only in the GUI, for export, and for compilation. But I worry that the 
result would be too complex for most mortals to use.

                      Randy.

"Edward Fish" <edward.r.fish@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:a8e001b7-254a-4143-b86a-2c38bbd50327@y9g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> Randy,
>  It sounds almost like you want the ability to:
> a) Define a collection of files; (not a true set, as duplicate
> [names] might be in it)
> b) Have the ability to 'subset' this collection; (this would be your
> [sub-]project)
> c) Associate from the set in 'b' files from 'a'; (allowing different
> bodies to be in different projects)
> d) Have changes to some files {the bodies} update only their
> associated file from 'a'.
>
> Something like this psudo-ada:
> x86_Compiler : Project:=
> ( "Compiler.A*","Frontend.A*","Backend.ADS","Backend.ADB" => "[INTEL]-
> Backend.ADB" );
>
> Is this an accurate description of what you want? 

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:02:46 -0600, Randy Brukardt wrote:

> "Ludovic Brenta" <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote in message 
> news:b1da7195-8f26-463e-a297-195131a615f0@j32g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> ...
>>CVS would not even help do that because CVS, being rubbish, has per-
>>file histories as opposed to per-project history.
> 
> Per-project history is also rubbish.

The point is that it is the project of which history you wanted, individual
files are of no interest when taken out of the project's context.

> In the entire history of RRSoftware, there have only been two projects: 
> Janus/Ada and Claw (ignoring a few hobbyist things). But these aren't 
> monolithic entities. Janus/Ada, especially, over its history consists of a 
> dozen or so separate tools, several in multiple parts, targetting about 25 
> different targets. (Many of those targets are obsolete now.) Different 
> targets were/are released at different times. If you treated those as 
> *separate* projects, then all of the shared files (the majority) end up 
> duplicated;

The "shared sets files" must be organized projects, obviously. This is the
strategy we are pursuing at cbb software. There are hundreds of projects
and very complex dependencies between them. We built our own project
management system on top of Perforce in order to maintain that and to carry
out automatic builds.

> A proper version control system would provide automatic warnings to the 
> owner of a file/subproject/whatever when a related file needs to be changed.

In our case it t is not a warning, but an error. E.g. if you have a diamond
diagram of project dependencies:

     A
    /  \
   B   C
    \  /
     D

then the tool does not permit different releases of A to come together in
D.

> No such thing existed (or exists, so far as I can tell), so we built our own 
> as a front-end to PVCS (later converted to CVS). That just uses CVS as a 
> fancy difference engine; file relationships are kept in our manager.

Perforce is just too slow and poorly designed (CVS, Subversion, MKS aren't
any better). A good system shall have a virtual file system and hold no
local copies at all. If this is not given, no reasonable project management
system can be built on its top.

> But none of the new VCs make any serious attempt to solve this problem.

Yes. They look like hobbist's projects of people who never had to maintain
a code base delivered to dozens customers with the need to track down older
releases.

> Merging, however is never a solution. It just moves the problem from 
> whereever it is now to the merge process.

Yes, we just disallowed merging at all. The tool does not allow concurrent
check-outs. Branching is not welcome either.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Maciej Sobczak]

On Jan 27, 12:02 am, "Randy Brukardt" <ra...@rrsoftware.com> wrote:

> if you treat those as *one* project, then you lose the ability
> to have separate releases for different part of the project.

Huh? Sorry, but this is nonsense. Nobody forces you to compress the
whole repository as a method for making a "release". If this feature
is supported by VCS, it is for convenience, but certainly not
obligatory.

What I do in such a case is a separate release script that builds the
deliverable packages from what is available in the repository. Many
such scripts can exist together without any problem to address the
case you describe (hint: these scripts can and should be versioned
together with everything else), and as well the repository can contain
stuff that is not supposed to be released at all.
Did I mention that such a script can also make some last-second
automated modifications to the package, like generating docs or
sticking appropriate license to all source files for multi-licensed
projects?

In general, the concept of making a "release" by just compressing the
whole repository is simplified to the point of being useless. This
seems to be a common practice in many open-source projects, but I'm
surprised by that.

> Merging, however is never a solution.

I agree. I use it for the fast-forward type of merging, where files
are not modified and only the logical progress is made, but I don't
trust the "automated-editing" type of merge. The overhead of further
verification is equivalent to manual editing anyway.

--
Maciej Sobczak * http://www.inspirel.com

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 26.01.11 12:32, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote:
> Le Wed, 26 Jan 2011 09:36:57 +0100, Ludovic Brenta
> <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> a écrit:
>> you can backport bug fixes. You cannot do these things with "just" a
>> tarball.
> That's more diff (or like) than CVS which helps here.

Change sets make a difference.

Even more advanced version control systems (Accurev?)
integrate SCM with issue tracking, staff assignments, ...

Another nicety is when a VCS supports barriers in the
sense of logic that prevents committing unconditionally.
Cannot then commit changes to a release branch unless
Script (Source) = True.  (Or, can commit, but cannot
build a release archive if Script (Version) = False.)

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[anon]

In <a96af7c6-1317-4f40-bdd8-3ce2eb385d0c@y16g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>, Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> writes:
>anon wrote on comp.lang.ada:
>> Most open OS that use CVS/SVN/GIT are based on BSD or LINUX or the AT&T
>> old OS system.
>>
>> And before complaining about Ada OSs, remember Linux is a single file
>> and to obtain its source, one must download a single archived file. Linux
>> does not use CVS/SVN/GIT.
>
>You seem to live back in 2003. Linus Torvalds created git specifically
>so he could maintain the sources of Linux. The Linux developers have
>been using git exclusively since then. See http://git.kernel.org.
>

People normally do not download a single file from the Linux source tree 
unless its a README/CHANGES/PATCH or a compress archive file. That's 
because it is easier to start with a clean directory and download a fresh 
stable copy of the kernel. A second or but still acceptable is to use a patch 
to update the files and hopefully rebuild a clean kernel. Plus, the current 
archived compress kernel is around 50 MB which means the source files 
tree could be 100 .. 200 MB uncompressed and how many people want to 
spend the time to downloaded each uncompress file even if a program 
does it for you. And what happens if one or more files are received 
corrupt, in some cases a single file may pass error checking and still be 
corrupt. If the patch or archived files is corrupt, we find that out quickly 
aand ajust quickly

Also, we should not care what if any VCS, Linus Torvalds or his team uses 
on there systems to maintain the Kernel source tree.  Just like we should 
not care about what type the distro Linuxes use for the archived files 
like "deb", "rpm" or "gz", they all work but some are OK and some are 
pains in the backside.

Plus except for the linux distro maintainers how many people download each 
and every new version of the Kernel or for Ada download every version of 
GNAT for each new GCC. Most people I would say download their GNAT copy 
in May .. July, unless they update their linux distro. With one major exception 
and that is when a bug appears in the yearly released copy.

>> As for MaTRE/Openravencar/RTERM are OS for Real_Time applications with
>> usage of Posix design. And all three of these OS have some of the build-in
>> libraries written in C based on the Utah OSKIT. So, these OSs may share the
>> design concept of openSource but they do not care to spend their time in
>> maintaining a source tree as other openSource OS do. Because when a
>> maintainer changes one line in a source file to fix a bug it may cause
>> changes in 100s of other files. So to maintain the correctness of the OS it is
>> better bundle the source files into a single archived file and this process
>> decreases the maintaining and download time as well as traffic cost.
>
>If changing one file implies changing 100 other files, then the
>software is badly designed. That has nothing to do with whether a
>version control system should or should not be used. Note that proper
>VCSs treat the entire source tree as one entity, so they allow you to
>record changes to 100 files in one atomic operation. Git, Monotone,
>Bazaar, Mercurial, Fossil all have this property. Heck, even
>Subversion has it.
>

Try explaining that to those who had to downloaded complete packages after 
the GPL license was updated. Which cause all files to be altered to change 
the "GPL 2" to "GPL 3" for its acceptance of the new license. That cause 
all VCS to force complete downloads of all files. That is not bad programming, 
that just happens in the life of some programs.

Another example could be if the ARG decided to add a keyword call "parallel" 
for true parallel in Ada. And the first programmer at Adacore uses the word 
"paralel" (typo, may compile but it is still misspelled) and uses the internal 
token "tok_paralel". Which will be embedded into 4 files that are used to 
store keywords information. As well as the Parse routines ("par" 21 files 
plus one for the parallel syntax) and Semantic routines ("sem" 62 files plus 2 
for the parallel semantics) and Expansion routines (exp" 56 files plus at least 
2 for the parallel expansion design), plus a few C files that makes up 
the "GIGI" backend routine if the GCC can handle the Ada parallel design 
and/or some Ada runtime files. Now, there no problem until the testing phase 
where the first programmer may just correct the keyword but leave the 
internal token alone, but a second programmer alters a few files to 
correct keyword and the internal token and fixes the function of the parallel 
code and in the process cause 100s of syntax errors. To completely fix the 
error will require over a 100 files to be updated just for a simple typo. That's 
also not bad programming that the way it happens sometimes when altering 
an existing program and or using a team of programmers.

VCS if used should only be use internal, the public should only be allowed 
to download compressed archived files or patch files. Or maybe an compressed 
archived of the changed files. And to help improve server preformance use 
secure FTP/HTTP with readonly files. No special software is required, just 
click and download.


>> And not all of the openSource OS are GCC version 2 or 3 some have modified
>> GCC or modified BSD or even their own license that may require the person
>> downloading to accept the license before downloading.
>
>So?
>
>> If you look at sourceforge you will see a lot of packages do not fully use the
>> CVS/SVN concept due to the fact that the maintainer choose not to. That way
>> if you download a package you are suppose to get all files required including
>> the license.
>
>Tarballs are OK but not required.
>A version control system is OK but not required.
>Having both is good.
>
>> And a final note: openSource is a great concept but it is not a Prefect
>> concept. Because there is no Perfect concept only what works for that
>> group of designer at that time. And CVS/SVN/GIT is not perfect either
>> it is just what some use todays to obtain files.
>
>No, it is not "just" to obtain files. A version control system is
>supposed to control the versioning(!). With a version control system,
>you can obtain the software before it is officially released as
>tarballs, you can use bisection to find when a bug was introduced, you
>can backport bug fixes. You cannot do these things with "just" a
>tarball.
>

People who download newer version sometimes mess up there current 
version system by trying to use the newer code which may require newer 
api.  An example of this is using programs that use Linux 2.6 on Linux 2.5 
or earlier using TCP/IP6 program on a systyem that only has TCP/IP4.

And who really cares when a bug was fix, most people would say just please 
fix that bug!

>> Its better to just download the package instead of complaining about hot it storage on the
>> hosting computer.
>
>It is better only if the release tarballs are complete and free of
>bugs and if you do not need any functionality that has not been
>released yet.
>

If you need functionality that is pre released state it is better to 
write it yourself. Then wait until the maintainers have time to add 
the functionality correctly.

>--
>Ludovic Brenta.

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Dirk Heinrichs]

anon@att.net wrote:

> Most open OS that use CVS/SVN/GIT are based on BSD or LINUX or the AT&T
> old OS system.

RTEMS, Haiku, Marte, Lovelace, Hurd? Based on Linux? Based on BSD? I guess 
not.

> And before complaining about Ada OSs, remember Linux is a single file
> and to obtain its source, one must download a single archived file. Linux
> does not use CVS/SVN/GIT.

No, of course Linus has created GIT just to proove he can do it.

> As for MaTRE/Openravencar/RTERM are OS for Real_Time applications with
> usage of Posix design.

s/RTERM/RTEMS/, right?

> And all three of these OS have some of the build-in
> libraries written in C based on the Utah OSKIT. So, these OSs may share
> the design concept of openSource but they do not care to spend their time
> in maintaining a source tree as other openSource OS do. Because when a
> maintainer changes one line in a source file to fix a bug it may cause
> changes in 100s of other files. So to maintain the correctness of the OS
> it is better bundle the source files into a single archived file and this
> process decreases the maintaining and download time as well as traffic
> cost.

How does downloading a big archive containing everything reduce download 
times compared to only downloading only the changed files (svn up)?

> And not all of the openSource OS are GCC version 2 or 3 some have modified
> GCC or modified BSD or even their own license that may require the person
> downloading to accept the license before downloading.

s/GCC/GPL/g, right?

Bye...

	Dirk

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[anon]

In <ihsbfb$d4k$1@online.de>, Dirk Heinrichs <dirk.heinrichs@altum.de> writes:
>anon@att.net wrote:
>
>> Most open OS that use CVS/SVN/GIT are based on BSD or LINUX or the AT&T
>> old OS system.
>
>RTEMS, Haiku, Marte, Lovelace, Hurd? Based on Linux? Based on BSD? I guess 
>not.

First, there are 100s of openSource OS. A lot of them just store the source 
code in archived files such as zip or tar (gz or bz2) or etc.  

Even closed source like Apple's OSX is directly based on BSD since Apple's 
Steve Job help create the openSource version of BSD and Apple admits that 
OSX is directly linked to BSD. Which also means that OSX is direcly based 
on AT&T old OS from 1969. 

Linus Torvalds wrote Linux ( L plus an anagram of the true name of AT&T 
old OS that I nolonger use) to be a alternative to the high priced AT&T 
old OS with all of the features of AT&T old OS. And any OS that uses
Posix, System V Api or other programs that was develope for an OS version 
that is based on BSD or AT&T old OS is directly or indirecly linked to 
BSD and AT&T old OS.


RTEMS    -- Includes supports for Posix and BSD sockets and 
            GNU based toolset GCC C and GNAT.

MaRTE    -- requires Linux and/or Bare-bones system. Plus, has Posix 
            built-in and its storage online as a compressed tar. 
            Note: the current version 1.9 requires Ada GPL 2009 they 
            are working on the version for Ada GPL 2010.

Hurd     -- Is still stored at GNU archives under CVS
            Plus, the GNU (GNU OS) states that its is based on the 
            AT&T old OS.

Lovelace -- Lovelace is not an OS, its just a frontend to the L4 kernel just 
            like Windows pre 95 was for DOS back in the 1980s and early 
            1990s. Back then Windows was just a GUI shell application on 
            top of DOS with all of the problems associated with the 
            limitations of DOS. Plus, this shell was written in GNAT Ada.

            Actually, the first version Lovelace was promising, but 
            the current stored version is not that promising.

Haiku     -- don't get started with this one.  Plus as I said 
             "Most OS".




>
>> And before complaining about Ada OSs, remember Linux is a single file
>> and to obtain its source, one must download a single archived file. Linux
>> does not use CVS/SVN/GIT.
>
>No, of course Linus has created GIT just to proove he can do it.

Torvalds may have create GIT. but when one downloads the Linux kernel 
one downloads the compress tar file.  That saves traffic because at 
the movement the current compress source kernel is around 50 MB and 
uncompress it could be 100 .. 200 MB worth of files to be downloaded. 

Plus, except for Linux distro maintainers most people do not download 
each updated copy of the Linux kernel. Most may install two or three 
kernel within the life of the hardware to many changes to the kernel 
for a simple patch it better just to download the complete current 
stable file.





>
>> As for MaTRE/Openravencar/RTERM are OS for Real_Time applications with
>> usage of Posix design.
>
>s/RTERM/RTEMS/, right?
>
>> And all three of these OS have some of the build-in
>> libraries written in C based on the Utah OSKIT. So, these OSs may share
>> the design concept of openSource but they do not care to spend their time
>> in maintaining a source tree as other openSource OS do. Because when a
>> maintainer changes one line in a source file to fix a bug it may cause
>> changes in 100s of other files. So to maintain the correctness of the OS
>> it is better bundle the source files into a single archived file and this
>> process decreases the maintaining and download time as well as traffic
>> cost.
>
>How does downloading a big archive containing everything reduce download 
>times compared to only downloading only the changed files (svn up)?


If time is allocated it is better to download a tested archive then 
download a few files that might not be fully tested at all.

The second way is just to download a set of patch files and apply each 
patch to your copy to bring that copy to the current version. 

Example of a problem is when ever a package decides to update its license 
from GPL 2 to 3 all of the files were updated just to changing all GPL 
version character '2' to '3', which caused all Version Control Systems to 
force complete downloads of all files.  A better concept would be add the  
GPL version 3 license to the file tree and have all files state when 
they are created "that this file is under the latest version of the GPL". 
That would allow only those files that required updating to be downloaded 
plus a copy of the new license.

And downloading a single compressed file is faster and uses less traffic than 
downloading each file. Also, it shows the maintainers that you are aware that 
they are paying for you to have the right to obtain the files freely even if they 
change the license which changes the access and may be usage of every file 
dwnloaded.











>
>> And not all of the openSource OS are GCC version 2 or 3 some have modified
>> GCC or modified BSD or even their own license that may require the person
>> downloading to accept the license before downloading.
>
>s/GCC/GPL/g, right?
>
>Bye...
>
>	Dirk

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Ludovic Brenta]

Anon wrote on comp.lang.ada:
> Dirk Heinrichs writes:
>>a...@att.net wrote:
>
>>> Most open OS that use CVS/SVN/GIT are based on BSD or LINUX or the AT&T
>>> old OS system.
>
>> RTEMS, Haiku, Marte, Lovelace, Hurd? Based on Linux? Based on BSD? I guess
>> not.
>
> First, there are 100s of openSource OS. A lot of them just store the source
> code in archived files such as zip or tar (gz or bz2) or etc.  

Wrong. They don't "just" store the source; they use a proper VCS for
development and publish snapshots as tarballs. Whether the VCS is
public or private is another matter. And this is true for almost all
software, whether proprietary or not. Software developers who don't
use any VCS are simply novices and you should not run their software
on your machine.

> Even closed source like Apple's OSX is directly based on BSD since Apple's
> Steve Job help create the openSource version of BSD and Apple admits that
> OSX is directly linked to BSD. Which also means that OSX is direcly based
> on AT&T old OS from 1969.

OK, so MacOS X is a derivative of UNIX.

> Linus Torvalds wrote Linux ( L plus an anagram of the true name of AT&T
> old OS that I nolonger use) to be a alternative to the high priced AT&T
> old OS with all of the features of AT&T old OS. And any OS that uses
> Posix, System V Api or other programs that was develope for an OS version
> that is based on BSD or AT&T old OS is directly or indirecly linked to
> BSD and AT&T old OS.

OK, so Linux is a derivative of UNIX, although it does not share any
source code with UNIX. It does share part of the design and the native
API, though.

> RTEMS    -- Includes supports for Posix and BSD sockets and
>             GNU based toolset GCC C and GNAT.

Just because an OS is POSIX-compliant does not make it a derivative of
UNIX.

Proof:
IBM's MVS is POSIX-compliant but is not a derivative of UNIX.
Microsoft Windows has a POSIX-compliant API but is not a derivative of
UNIX.
OpenVMS is POSIX-compliant but is not a derivative of UNIX.
GNU HURD is POSIX-compliant but is not a derivative of UNIX (it shares
neither the design nor the sources of UNIX).

> Torvalds may have create GIT. but when one downloads the Linux kernel
> one downloads the compress tar file.  That saves traffic because at
> the movement the current compress source kernel is around 50 MB and
> uncompress it could be 100 .. 200 MB worth of files to be downloaded.

No, I for one do not download the compressed tar file. I update my git
mirror. This saves a lot more bandwidth.

> Plus, except for Linux distro maintainers most people do not download
> each updated copy of the Linux kernel. Most may install two or three
> kernel within the life of the hardware to many changes to the kernel

Most people do not download the sources of the kernel at all. In fact
they do not download the kernel at all; they install the one from the
CD-ROM their geek friend gave them instead.

> for a simple patch it better just to download the complete current
> stable file.

By definition, the "complete current stable file" does not include the
"simple patch". The "simple patch" must be downloaded on top of the
"complete current stable file"; that's why it is called a "patch". If
you upgrade from one "stable" relase of the kernel to a later one just
because you need a "simple patch", you're doing it wrong. The new
"stable" release will contain many changes you are not interested in,
do not know about and may introduce new bugs.

--
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[anon]

From: http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
       as well as 
       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd

States the Hurd is a (AT&T OS) like kernel. Aka it is like Linux a derivative 
kernel that does not share the old code! 

On the GNU site it states that it derivative from the March kernel. Mach 3
was developed as a replacement for the kernel in BSD. And any kernel 
replacing an existing kernel that uses the same API is in some way is based 
or derivative from the replacing kernel. Aka Hurd is based or derivative from 
AT&T OS.

Being that OpenVMS is derivative from VMS. If you go back to the late 1980s 
and read about VMS guy that quite DEC and created NT for Microsoft which 
now has been updated to the current version called Windows 7. You will see 
that he states VMS and NT uses a number of features that were derivative 
from BSD. And the orginal Windows was created at IBM and they used a 
number of feature that were also design for AIX (IBM's version of AT&T OS).
Aka Windows and OpenVMS (VMS) are based or derivative in some way from 
AT&T OS.

The sad point is that it has been said by a number of OS designers like 
Microsoft that the core of the major OSs that are being created since the 
1980s are all derivative from BSD aka AT&T old OS. Just like the major 
language to write these OSs is C (AT&T created in 1974 for their OS), 
instead of "C++", or other languages.  With most OS limiting the the 
usage of assembly to small footprints which allows easily altering to 
other CPUs.

One reason for the design is that the OS classes uses information 
and books that used initially BSD code and now Linux. 

And at this movement there are programmers writting kernels that will 
be openSource later. Some for classes while others are created for fun.  
And these programmers will never use a VCS of any kind and if they release 
the code they will simply put the compressed archive file on some free site 
or maybe their homepage with little or no documentation.

Now, since you are a Ada maintainer you might download each version of 
a set of packages or use GIT but others aka the greeks have projects they 
are working on so they do not spend all their time just downloading every 
version of GCC.  And I believe that if you had a HD crash or other damage 
to your system where the data or source code may have been currupted you 
would start with initially downloading the compressed archive then go back 
to downloading using VCS or others for updates. But most people are not 
maintainer they prefer a clean and working copy of the software and that 
includes greeks. 


In <82e67804-b143-45da-bd3a-d05c7ffc077f@k30g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>, Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> writes:
>Anon wrote on comp.lang.ada:
>> Dirk Heinrichs writes:
>>>a...@att.net wrote:
>>
>>>> Most open OS that use CVS/SVN/GIT are based on BSD or LINUX or the AT&T
>>>> old OS system.
>>
>>> RTEMS, Haiku, Marte, Lovelace, Hurd? Based on Linux? Based on BSD? I gue=
>ss
>>> not.
>>
>> First, there are 100s of openSource OS. A lot of them just store the sour=
>ce
>> code in archived files such as zip or tar (gz or bz2) or etc. =A0
>
>Wrong. They don't "just" store the source; they use a proper VCS for
>development and publish snapshots as tarballs. Whether the VCS is
>public or private is another matter. And this is true for almost all
>software, whether proprietary or not. Software developers who don't
>use any VCS are simply novices and you should not run their software
>on your machine.
>
>> Even closed source like Apple's OSX is directly based on BSD since Apple'=
>s
>> Steve Job help create the openSource version of BSD and Apple admits that
>> OSX is directly linked to BSD. Which also means that OSX is direcly based
>> on AT&T old OS from 1969.
>
>OK, so MacOS X is a derivative of UNIX.
>
>> Linus Torvalds wrote Linux ( L plus an anagram of the true name of AT&T
>> old OS that I nolonger use) to be a alternative to the high priced AT&T
>> old OS with all of the features of AT&T old OS. And any OS that uses
>> Posix, System V Api or other programs that was develope for an OS version
>> that is based on BSD or AT&T old OS is directly or indirecly linked to
>> BSD and AT&T old OS.
>
>OK, so Linux is a derivative of UNIX, although it does not share any
>source code with UNIX. It does share part of the design and the native
>API, though.
>
>> RTEMS =A0 =A0-- Includes supports for Posix and BSD sockets and
>> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 GNU based toolset GCC C and GNAT.
>
>Just because an OS is POSIX-compliant does not make it a derivative of
>UNIX.
>
>Proof:
>IBM's MVS is POSIX-compliant but is not a derivative of UNIX.
>Microsoft Windows has a POSIX-compliant API but is not a derivative of
>UNIX.
>OpenVMS is POSIX-compliant but is not a derivative of UNIX.
>GNU HURD is POSIX-compliant but is not a derivative of UNIX (it shares
>neither the design nor the sources of UNIX).
>
>> Torvalds may have create GIT. but when one downloads the Linux kernel
>> one downloads the compress tar file. =A0That saves traffic because at
>> the movement the current compress source kernel is around 50 MB and
>> uncompress it could be 100 .. 200 MB worth of files to be downloaded.
>
>No, I for one do not download the compressed tar file. I update my git
>mirror. This saves a lot more bandwidth.
>
>> Plus, except for Linux distro maintainers most people do not download
>> each updated copy of the Linux kernel. Most may install two or three
>> kernel within the life of the hardware to many changes to the kernel
>
>Most people do not download the sources of the kernel at all. In fact
>they do not download the kernel at all; they install the one from the
>CD-ROM their geek friend gave them instead.
>
>> for a simple patch it better just to download the complete current
>> stable file.
>
>By definition, the "complete current stable file" does not include the
>"simple patch". The "simple patch" must be downloaded on top of the
>"complete current stable file"; that's why it is called a "patch". If
>you upgrade from one "stable" relase of the kernel to a later one just
>because you need a "simple patch", you're doing it wrong. The new
>"stable" release will contain many changes you are not interested in,
>do not know about and may introduce new bugs.
>
>--
>Ludovic Brenta.

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Simon Wright]

anon@att.net writes:

> Now, since you are a Ada maintainer you might download each version of
> a set of packages or use GIT but others aka the greeks have projects
> they are working on so they do not spend all their time just
> downloading every version of GCC.  And I believe that if you had a HD
> crash or other damage to your system where the data or source code may
> have been currupted you would start with initially downloading the
> compressed archive then go back to downloading using VCS or others for
> updates. But most people are not maintainer they prefer a clean and
> working copy of the software and that includes greeks.

What have you got against greeks?

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[R. Tyler Croy]

anon@att.net wrote:

Trolling is an art, you sir are clearly an expert.

-- 
- R. Tyler Croy
--------------------------------------
    Code: http://github.com/rtyler

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Dirk Heinrichs]

anon@att.net wrote:

> In <ihsbfb$d4k$1@online.de>, Dirk Heinrichs <dirk.heinrichs@altum.de>
> writes:
>>anon@att.net wrote:
>>
>>> Most open OS that use CVS/SVN/GIT are based on BSD or LINUX or the AT&T
>>> old OS system.
>>
>>RTEMS, Haiku, Marte, Lovelace, Hurd? Based on Linux? Based on BSD? I guess
>>not.
> 
> First, there are 100s of openSource OS. A lot of them just store the
> source code in archived files such as zip or tar (gz or bz2) or etc.

No, they don't. They _provide_ tarballs of their releases to users, but they 
_store_ their sources in a VCS. Otherwise, development would be impossible.

> Even closed source like Apple's OSX is directly based on BSD since Apple's
> Steve Job help create the openSource version of BSD and Apple admits that
> OSX is directly linked to BSD. Which also means that OSX is direcly based
> on AT&T old OS from 1969.

Yes, so what?

> Linus Torvalds wrote Linux ( L plus an anagram of the true name of AT&T
> old OS that I nolonger use) to be a alternative to the high priced AT&T
> old OS with all of the features of AT&T old OS. And any OS that uses
> Posix, System V Api or other programs that was develope for an OS version
> that is based on BSD or AT&T old OS is directly or indirecly linked to
> BSD and AT&T old OS.

No, it's not "based on", it's "a clone of". That's a big difference. This is 
an Ada group, so consider the the following example: Let's say you have a 
spec for a "Stacks" package. Now, how do you implement your stack, as an 
array or as a linked list? It doesn't matter as long as both comply to the 
spec. The same is true for POSIX or any other API. There can be different, 
independent implementations.

> RTEMS    -- Includes supports for Posix and BSD sockets and
>             GNU based toolset GCC C and GNAT.

Yes, so what? It even reuses the FreeBSD network stack. That still doesn't 
make it a derivative of Unix. It's concepts are fundamentally different.

> MaRTE    -- requires Linux and/or Bare-bones system. Plus, has Posix
>             built-in and its storage online as a compressed tar.

Yes, so what. Linux makes a great host environment for doing development for 
embedded, real time OS. That doen't make the target OS a derivative of it. 
And, as before, they _provide_ their releases as tarballs, but they're doing 
their development in some VCS (although they seem to keep that closed).

> Hurd     -- Is still stored at GNU archives under CVS
>             Plus, the GNU (GNU OS) states that its is based on the
>             AT&T old OS.

The Hurd's concepts are way too different from that of Unix to be a 
derivative of it and the GNU project NOWHERE states this. They say it shall 
be a Unix replacement, which is, again, a big difference.

> Lovelace -- Lovelace is not an OS, its just a frontend to the L4 kernel
> just
>             like Windows pre 95 was for DOS back in the 1980s and early
>             1990s. Back then Windows was just a GUI shell application on
>             top of DOS with all of the problems associated with the
>             limitations of DOS. Plus, this shell was written in GNAT Ada.

An OS is more than just the kernel. While you could use DOS without Windows 
back then, you can't use L4 alone. The same is true for DOS itself. What you 
call DOS is a kernel plus a set of fundamental applications. In that sense, 
Lovelace IS an OS.

> Haiku     -- don't get started with this one.  Plus as I said
>              "Most OS".

But except for MacOS X, every OS you cited is exactly NOT based on Unix.

>>> And before complaining about Ada OSs, remember Linux is a single file
>>> and to obtain its source, one must download a single archived file.
>>> Linux does not use CVS/SVN/GIT.
>>
>>No, of course Linus has created GIT just to proove he can do it.
> 
> Torvalds may have create GIT. but when one downloads the Linux kernel
> one downloads the compress tar file.

It's not "one" downloads the compressed tar file, but rather "you" do this. 
Just because you do it doesn't mean others do it, too. I use git, but that 
doesn't make me go around and tell the world "Hey, everyone uses git to 
download Linux kernel sources.".

> That saves traffic because at
> the movement the current compress source kernel is around 50 MB and
> uncompress it could be 100 .. 200 MB worth of files to be downloaded.

You seem to think VCS's don't compress their traffic (at least CVS does). 
Even if they don't, as said before: From one release to the next, they only 
download what has been changed, which is usually far less than 50M.

> Plus, except for Linux distro maintainers most people do not download
> each updated copy of the Linux kernel. Most may install two or three
> kernel within the life of the hardware to many changes to the kernel
> for a simple patch it better just to download the complete current
> stable file.

Those people most likely do not download the sources at all, they just 
install the precompiled kernel of their distribution, which usually is well 
below 10M.

Bye...

	Dirk

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Simon Wright]

Dirk Heinrichs <dirk.heinrichs@altum.de> writes:

> You seem to think VCS's don't compress their traffic (at least CVS
> does).

With CVS, it's optional (cvs -z). With others, it's standard.

Waiting for Sourceforge to re-enable CVS ..

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Shark8]

On Jan 25, 2:08 pm, "R. Tyler Croy" <ty...@linux.com> wrote:
> I've seen MaRTE OS which has source available, the development isn't really
> conducted in a large open SVN/Git repo as far as I can tell.
>
> Are there any projects incorporate Ada with an open source operating system,
> the Debian/kFreeBSD project comes to mind.
>
> --
> - R. Tyler Croy
> --------------------------------------
>     Code:http://github.com/rtyler

Actually I'd like to write an OS in Ada {I believe that the more of
the OS is in a high-level language the more protection against
programming-errors}.
Open Source isn't my first choice (as I'd like to get a little money
from my work); but showing off the abilities of Ada might be worth
it...

Are you interested?

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Wed, 26 Jan 2011 06:13:30 +0100, Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com> a  
écrit:
> Actually I'd like to write an OS in Ada {I believe that the more of
> the OS is in a high-level language the more protection against
> programming-errors}.
> Open Source isn't my first choice (as I'd like to get a little money
> from my work); but showing off the abilities of Ada might be worth
> it...
>
> Are you interested?
Would you like to tell about specifications summary and intended user  
audience ?


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Shark8]

On Jan 26, 12:44 am, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
<yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr> wrote:
>
> Would you like to tell about specifications summary and intended user  
> audience ?

Sure; the intended audience for the OS itself (divorcing, for the
moment, from the Operating Environment/UI) would be developers. In
much the same sense that Java and .NET are/were touted as safe & ease-
of-use for the developer. Or, if we want to be a little more specific,
Student/Academics & Scientists; I believe that the task language-
construct could also be leveraged nicely to allow for parallelism
(both distributed and local) -- which is supposed to be "the next big
obstacle" in mainstream/commercial software.

As for a Specification Summery; I've not really done a specification
(read & implemented, yes; created, no) and so I'm a bit nervous about
trying to summarize what is rather highly informal scrawlings of ideas
in several notebooks. Though I suppose the "fundamental theory" could
be described as an anti-Unix: everything is NOT a file, they are
objects (general-sense more than OOP-sense) that should be treated as
such.

I suppose a good example would be a HTML file; sure you could store it
as a text-file, because it *IS* a text-file... but it's also a subtype
of a text-file, and could be an object of some form similar to:
Type HTML_File is New Text_File with record
  Header : HTML_Header_Type;
  Body    : HTML_Body_Type;
end record;

That example might be more confusing than I intend though; in which
case just ignore it. I'll mull over how to synopsis a spec out of my
pile of random thoughts.

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Ludovic Brenta]

On Jan 25, 10:08 pm, "R. Tyler Croy" <ty...@linux.com> wrote:
> I've seen MaRTE OS which has source available, the development isn't really
> conducted in a large open SVN/Git repo as far as I can tell.
>
> Are there any projects incorporate Ada with an open source operating system,
> the Debian/kFreeBSD project comes to mind.

http://www.lovelace.fr

While the home page has not been updated in years, Xavier Grave
continues to work on the kernel itself from time to time. Browse the
source history here to get an idea:

http://green.ada-france.org:8081/branch/changes/org.os-lovelace

--
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: Open source Ada OS?

[Warren]

R. Tyler Croy expounded in
news:4d3f3be3$0$22088$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net: 

> I've seen MaRTE OS which has source available, the
> development isn't really conducted in a large open SVN/Git
> repo as far as I can tell. 
> 
> Are there any projects incorporate Ada with an open source
> operating system, the Debian/kFreeBSD project comes to
> mind. 

A number of years ago, I was playing with the following C 
based microkernel, combined with my own Ada code:

http://rtmk.sourceforge.net/

It hasn't been maintained since 2002 but could still form a 
start.

I actually had some Ada code linked into it, and it booted up 
ok.  Today with the availability of Virtual Box, this sort of 
development should be much more convenient now.

My plan was to get something working with added Ada modules 
and then gradually replace the rtmk C code with Ada modules.

But I had to abandon that work because it is a very time 
consuming pursuit. I have far too many other priority things 
to do. But it was very fun at the time. I might just have to 
dig it out again and try it in Virtual Box, for fun. ;-)

My suggestion is to open source your effort and work on 
selling support instead. Or adopt a Trolltech (Qt) approach. 
Getting anyone to actually buy software today is an extremely 
tough sell.

Warren