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From: Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: How to nicely distribute a simple Ada library?
Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2011 22:04:57 +0000
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Date: 2011-12-04T22:04:57+00:00
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Natasha Kerensikova <lithiumcat@gmail.com> writes:

> I gather that packaging systems have their own way to perform the
> installation, but how can I provide an installation mechanism that
> does not depend on a distribution? I would rather avoid automess
> tools, they feel extremely overkill compared to the simplicity and
> presumed portability of my libraries. I can write a `make install` in
> pure makefile language, but is there another more idiomatic way of
> doing it?  What about windows or mac platforms?

I don't have access to other compilers than GNAT, but for GNAT (GPL and
FSF) I do try to support Linux and Windows/Cygwin as well as Mac OS X.

I've put a small writeup from the user point of view at [1]. This is a
work in progress.

One thing I personally find helpful is to install alongside the
compiler, because I have more than one installed (at the moment, GCC
4.6.0 and GNAT GPL 2011). The source may be compiler-agnostic, but the
object and ali files certainly aren't. Also, this saves the bother of
specifying the ADA_PROJECT_PATH.

There are at least 2 ways of doing this with GNAT. One is the way that
GNAT GPL and FSF GCC use, which is that the GPR is found in
$prefix/lib/gnat/, source in $prefix/include/$package/ and objects in
$prefix/lib/$package/. The other is the way that Debian uses (see the
Policy).

[1] http://booch95.sourceforge.net/installation.html