Re: Your wish list for Ada 202X

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Jacob Sparre Andersen" <jacob@jacob-sparre.dk> wrote in message 
news:87bnwrn1m9.fsf@adaheads.sparre-andersen.dk...
...
> As there is no ACATS for Ada (2012) or Ada 2005, it is difficult for us
> customers to be sure of the state of the compilers we have to choose
> between.

Huh? ACATS 3.0 for Ada 2005 has been available since 2008. An updated 
version 3.1 was issued in January, for use aftter April 1st. It's not as 
complete as one might like, but it surely exists and tests all of the really 
important new features of Ada 2005.

> My three big wishes for Ada are that:
>
> 1) ACATS is updated to match the current Ada standard.

ACATS 4.0 is under active development and should be released in the next few 
months. I just released the first snapshot last week, see 
http://www.ada-auth.org/acats.html.

> 2) Any new standard is published _with_ a matching edition of ACATS.

That's of course impractical as the same person (that is, me) is responsible 
for both. Finishing up a standard is a full time job. Doing the ACATS 
afterwards works well because it provides me something to do in between 
major Standards work. Else I'd have to get a real job and would most likely 
be unavailable for future work of any kind.

The ARG has a discussion item on the agenda for the next meeting as to 
whether we should require ACATS tests from ARG members, which would 
certainly decrease the time lag. But it also has the possibility of 
preventing a lot of work on the standard, by making it many times more 
difficult for simpler issues. Several ARG members have indicated that they 
have no interest in writing ACATS tests, so we would stand to lose 
participation. (And we need more, not less participation!)

> 3) The ARG establishes a process for expanding ACATS with user-provided 
> examples.

The ACATS has *always* taken user-submitted tests. There are examples in the 
ACATS going back as far as 1990. You can find out about submitting test on 
the user-submitted test page: http://www.ada-auth.org/submit.html. Most the 
tests that I'm using to create ACATS 4.0 are user-submitted.

As far as putting arbitrary user-provided stuff into the ACATS, that's a bad 
idea because it misinterprets the point of the ACATS. The ACATS is intended 
to support FORMAL conformity assessment testing for Ada. It's NOT about 
finding bugs in compilers (although it certainly does do that). ACATS tests 
have to be portable to all reasonable implementations of Ada (or documented 
as to what they don't apply to), they have to include appropriate pass/fail 
information (and be self-checking if executable), and so on. ACATS tests get 
formal maintenance, with a defined dispute procedure and defined change 
mechanism. This could be overwhelmed if lower-quality tests flooded the test 
suite.

That said, it would be great if someone created a lightly-managed repository 
of user-provided examples for Ada. I tried to create such a reposistory back 
in the Ada 9x days, but no one other than me wanted to contribute to it. 
Perhaps some other organization would have better luck.

                        Randy Brukardt, ACAA Technical Agent.