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From: Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP>
Subject: Re: some questions on installing Ada on Linux
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2014 12:22:37 +0000 (UTC)
Date: 2014-07-04T12:22:37+00:00	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <lp66ad$npf$1@dont-email.me> (raw)
In-Reply-To: lp5uti$ofv$1@speranza.aioe.org

On 2014-07-04, Nasser M. Abbasi <nma@12000.org> wrote:
>
> some basic questions. Goggling these is giving me hard so
> I thought I ask here.
>
> What is the correct way to install Ada on Linux these days?
> I am on Linux mint 17.
>
> 1) Should one install GNAT on Linux by downloading tar files from
> http://libre.adacore.com  (GPL 2014 edition) or use
>
>    sudo apt-get install gnat-4.8
>
> 2) Will the sudo installation install all the stuff listed at
> libre.adacore.com? including GPS editor and all the other
> packages?
>
> 3) Which is more recent, gnat-4.8 or GPL 2014 edition?
>
> 4) When I go to http://libre.adacore.com/download/configurations
> is there a way to tell it to check everything for download,
> without one having to spend 1 hr clicking on the check-box
> for each item? I do not see "select all"
>
> It is really confusing having Ada/GNAT in 2 different places.
> Why not have one place to install Ada from so it is less
> confusing to users?
>

I'll let someone who installs the pre-packaged toolchains answer your
other questions (I'm RedHat based and just build a new gcc/binutils
toolchain from the FSF source when the need arises) but the core problem
is that there are two distinct branches of the GNAT sources which cannot
be merged due to licence conflicts.

The FSF branch is the main gcc toolchain branch (C, C++, Ada, Fortran,
etc) which is present in all non-Ada installations and whose licence
allows you to create closed source commercial applications with it.
When a non-Ada person talks about "gcc" without identifying a specific
branch that's almost certainly the branch they are talking about.

In addition, AdaCore have their own version of this toolchain with
various Ada enhancements present in it (I don't know the details).
However, the public version of this AdaCore specific version of the
toolchain is strict GPL only which means you cannot create closed
source applications with it.

And yes, you are correct, it's probably all very confusing to a
newcomer to Ada to have multiple toolchains with incompatible licences
and it is just another barrier in the way of people trying out Ada.

I work with the FSF branch only because of it's additional freedoms
and because this branch is also the basis (for example) for Ada
language application support in RTEMS.

Simon.

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

  reply	other threads:[~2014-07-04 12:22 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2014-07-04 10:16 some questions on installing Ada on Linux Nasser M. Abbasi
2014-07-04 12:22 ` Simon Clubley [this message]
2014-07-04 15:49   ` Dan'l Miller
2014-07-04 16:30     ` Simon Wright
2014-07-04 17:08     ` Simon Clubley
2014-07-04 17:30       ` Simon Clubley
2014-07-04 17:40       ` Ludovic Brenta
2014-07-04 17:22 ` Ludovic Brenta
2014-10-07 13:43 ` brbarkstrom
2014-10-07 15:58   ` Simon Wright
2014-10-07 16:56 ` brbarkstrom
2014-10-07 18:47   ` Ludovic Brenta
2014-10-07 19:06 ` brbarkstrom
2014-10-07 19:13   ` Ludovic Brenta
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