Re: Ada package registry?

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

"Shark8" <onewingedshark@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:5e723414-8c8d-4487-87ac-60d95e1b4e01@googlegroups.com...
On Monday, February 1, 2016 at 5:44:50 PM UTC-7, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> <olivier.henley> wrote in message
>> >1. There is a website, e.g code.dlang.org, wiki style with limited 
>> >editing
>> >power;
>> > enough to add your package infos, e.g JSON file with all infos, 
>> > authors,
>> > name,
>> > dependencies etc.
>>
>> Which requires the author to do something; many of them can't even be
>> bothered to post about their libraries here (like AdaID) or send a link 
>> to
>> AdaIC? Why do you think they would use some more complex website?
>
>Well, to be fair "posting about their libraries here" *IS* requiring the 
>authors to be doing something.

Surely. But sending a link here or to AdaIC is about the minimum something I 
can imagine (anything less and you don't really want to make the library 
public in the first place -- which is irrelevant to this discussion).


>> ...
>> BTW, this is *exactly* what I thought you meant. I find it a combination 
>> of
>> overkill and likely harm to the Ada community (by excluding large 
>> portions
>> of, by the extra work involved at a minimum).

>I see your point, but I don't agree that it's likely to harm the Ada 
>community. (Provided that it's done competently.)

Harm from two things:
(1) Working only with a limited number of Ada implementations (most likely 
one);
(2) Only having a limited subset of code available;

Both of these could be fixed, but it would be very difficult to do. (A 
similar example was the job posting site that the AdaIC used to have. It was 
underpopulated enough so as to be more harmful than valuable, giving the 
impression of a lack of jobs. We finally got rid of it.)

>> I am not interested into moving to on-line systems that would require
>> significant work (to save nearly 30 years of development history), to 
>> lose
>> important capabilities, and to have less security. Change for the sake of
>> change (and that's what most of it is) is actively harmful to everyone, 
>> and
>> a massive waste of time.
>
>I understand and agree -- however, if the system you're using is 30 years 
>old
> and contains facilities that modern VCSs lack, doesn't this mean that 
> there's an opportunity here?

Surely. The system we have works quite well for our needs, but I suspect it 
would be too inflexible for others. The layout needs to be more akin to a 
network or even relational system than the hierarchical approach I took. The 
hierarchical approach is easy to understand, but the one way dependencies 
can be overly limiting. I never figured out a good way to generalize it, 
thus I've never pursued it further. Besides, VCSes seem to be nearly a 
religious experience (similar to the way many programmers feel about their 
editors), and I wasn't sure I wanted to wade into that (having done 
something similar with Ada when I was younger).

                                    Randy.