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-Thread: 103376,3e26dfa741e64e5f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news3.google.com!news.glorb.com!news.banetele.no!news.szn.dk!news.jacob-sparre.dk!pnx.dk!not-for-mail From: Jacob Sparre Andersen Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: GNAT GPL 2005 Edition is now available Date: 15 Sep 2005 11:39:42 +0200 Organization: Jacob's private Usenet server Sender: sparre@hugin.crs4.it Message-ID: References: <432919be$0$10539$4d4eb98e@read.news.fr.uu.net> <1126773856.876636.265130@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: hugin.crs4.it Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: jacob-sparre.dk 1126777184 2840 156.148.71.67 (15 Sep 2005 09:39:44 GMT) X-Complaints-To: sparre@jacob-sparre.dk NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 09:39:44 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.4 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:4690 Date: 2005-09-15T11:39:42+02:00 List-Id: Ludovic Brenta wrote: > Out of curiosity, which one of the GNATs supplied by Debian do you > use? Sarge has gnat (3.15p), gnat-3.3 (3.3.6) and gnat-3.4 (3.4.3). > All of them use the GMGPL for the run-time library. Etch (currently > in testing and in a state of flux) has gnat (3.15p), gnat-3.4 > (3.4.4) and gnat-4.0 (4.0.1). On my Debian/unstable workstation (iBook G4): ii gnat 3.15p-13 The GNU Ada 95 compiler On my Debian/stable server (Soekris net4801): ii gnat 3.15p-12 The GNU Ada 95 compiler > I've downloaded GNAT GPL 2005 Edition and will review it as time > permits. If I execute on my previously published Debian Policy for > Ada, this GPL Edition will become the next "gnat" package in Debian > Etch. The fact that the run-time library uses the GPL is not a > problem for me, nor is it for Debian (for example, Debian already > supplies Qt which is also GPL). However, if sufficiently many > people object to this, I will reconsider. I want to have some freedom in choosing which license I distribute my software under. With "libgnat" under GPL that will not be possible using Debian, and I will have to find a different platform or a different language for my future work. Since it is practically impossible to write an Ada program which doesn't use "libgnat" when compiled with GNAT, I find that comparing "libgnat" with Qt is unreasonable. > As of now, there are several possible choices for the next default > Ada compiler in Debian: > > * GNAT GPL 2005 Edition, with libgnat under GPL (from > libre.adacore.com) This one is out of the question for me. > * gnat-3.4, with libgnat-3.4 under GMGPL (from gcc.gnu.org) > > * gnat-4.0, with libgnat-4.0 under GMGPL (from gcc.gnu.org) I haven't got any specific preference among these two, but I tend to hope that the newer version is somewhat better. > * gnat-3.4 from gcc.gnu.org, with patches merged from GNAT GPL 2005 > Edition, retaining the libgnat-3.4 under GMGPL. This means much > more work for me, and I invite contributions. This also means that > this compiler will be different from compilers in all other > distributions. This sounds like too much work to be practical. Then I will rather spend some time learning the ins and outs of the gnat-4.0 and libgnat-4.0 source code, so I can start contributing. > Please take into account that recent versions of ASIS and GLADE are > only available under GPL, not GMGPL. I hope these recent versions haven't been copied to gcc.gnu.org, since that clearly would be against GCC policy (as I understand it). > The same is true for AWS, GtkAda, XML/Ada etc. but is less of a > concern because these libraries are not tightly coupled with the > compiler. Exactly. > Please cast a vote on this forum. This is the time to influence the > next version of Debian. 1) gnat-4.0 2) gnat-3.4 3) gnat-3.4 + patches from GNAT GPL 2005 -) GNAT GPL 2005 Greetings, Jacob -- "Any newsgroup where software developers hang out is an Emacs newsgroup."