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-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,7bcba1db9ed24fa7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-07-10 02:02:20 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!193.251.151.101!opentransit.net!proxad.net!feeder2-1.proxad.net!nnrp3.proxad.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Sender: briot@berlin.int.act-europe.fr Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: is ada dead? References: From: Emmanuel Briot Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 09:02:19 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 213.228.58.169 X-Complaints-To: abuse@proxad.net X-Trace: nnrp3.proxad.net 994755739 213.228.58.169 (Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:02:19 CEST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:02:19 CEST Organization: Guest of ProXad - France Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:9707 Date: 2001-07-10T09:02:19+00:00 List-Id: Vinzent Hoefler writes: > The other is to start developing lots of "cool" stuff with it. *That*, I > think >we can do. Right now the best example of this that I know of is GVD > >(http://libre.act-europe.fr/gvd/ ), but perhaps I'm a werido for thinking > >debuggers are cool. :-) > > Hey, this one _is_ cool. > > But, hmm, quite long buglist for an Ada project *ouch* *NO, NO, NO, please > don't beat me, it's just the big font!* Not beating you on the head, but: There are actually several things worth nothing with regards to gvd: - thanks to Ada, the development was very fast (we started coding at the beginning of May 2000, and had a first public release around november I think, with a very usable version already. - The list of "bugs" is in fact not that long. If you look into the file we have put in the distribution, it is more of a list of things to do or that would be nice to have, ie a list of possible enhancements. There are some bugs, admittedly (and we fix some every week, especially related to cross-platform development :-(). - Another big win of Ada is the portability: porting from our linux machines to a windows host was mostly the matter of rewritting the low-level communication package (through pipes and ttys). And this package has now been integrated in GNAT itself, so the portability would be even easier now :-) I do not know of many C projects that are as easy to port... - GVD might be one of the first free-software Ada project (along with Seti@home) that doesn't only target the Ada world. Now, something not related to you. I see lots of people suggesting that we should have lots of Ada applications around to prove that Ada is not dead. However, as the co-author of several big packages that were released as open-source projects (GtkAda, GVD, XML/Ada, ada-mode for Emacs), I am sorry to say that we do not get a lot of patches (certainly less that equivalent C projects do). We do fully appreciate the bug reports, and the few suggestions for enhancements, but that doesn't increase the time we have to develop the projects! I don't know if this is related to the size of the Ada community, or simply a lack of a free-software culture in this Ada world, but it would certainly seem like the first nice step forward (contributing to existing Ada projects). There is also AWS, OpenToken, AdaOS,... so there's probably already something you might be interested in and where your knowledge would be much appreciated. It would be interesting to know from the authors of the other packages whether they get patches or not. Emmanuel