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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: GNAT GPL is not shareware
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 18:00:48 -0600
Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation
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Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:24557
Date: 2015-01-12T18:00:48-06:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

"G.B." <bauhaus@futureapps.invalid> wrote in message 
news:m90n2n$c2p$1@dont-email.me...
...
> Tiny example:
> .ali files of GNAT and the ./info files of AdaMagic may
> (theoretically) share a schema of Ada library data,
> data available on request, leaving hardly any performance hit.

That's not really practical; different compilers store very different 
information in those files. GNAT stores hardly anything in an .ali file, 
preferring to recompile everything as needed. (A true source-based model.) 
OTOH, a compiler like Janus/Ada stores pre-compiled data in it's SYM files, 
it never recompiles anything other than by explicit compile command. The 
commonality is so small that there isn't much to be gained by a standard for 
library data.

What would happen is that you'd have a definition of "library data" that 
matched one particular compiler, and either everyone else would have to 
conform to it (making them less efficient than the one that they had to 
match) or ignore the "standard" (providing no benefit at all). That's the 
problem with ASIS, after all. It essentially matches the way that the circa 
1990 Rational compiler works (which is downright weird, IMHO), and everyone 
else either has to bend their technology to match it somehow, or simply not 
bother and hope the silly thing goes away.

I don't see how either does any good unless you really want a 
single-implementation ecosystem. (Even AdaCore doesn't want that for Ada.)

                                    Randy.