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: 103376,60bd6bcf946ebe3 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news1.google.com!news.germany.com!border1.nntp.ams.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news-in.ntli.net!newsrout1-win.ntli.net!ntli.net!news.highwinds-media.com!newspeer1-win.ntli.net!newsfe4-gui.ntli.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail From: "Dr. Adrian Wrigley" Subject: Re: Ada (GNAT) and GNU Scientific Library User-Agent: Pan/0.14.2 (This is not a psychotic episode. It's a cleansing moment of clarity.) Message-Id: Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada References: <87odr7zgnn.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org> <1163768283.498569.179310@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> <1163798903.068167.254550@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 00:32:13 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.21.99.109 X-Trace: newsfe4-gui.ntli.net 1163809933 82.21.99.109 (Sat, 18 Nov 2006 00:32:13 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 00:32:13 GMT Organization: NTL Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:7546 Date: 2006-11-18T00:32:13+00:00 List-Id: On Fri, 17 Nov 2006 13:28:23 -0800, george wrote: > brian.b.mcguinness@lmco.com wrote: >> I would think that it would be more useful to translate the library to >> Ada >> as a generic package, so any floating type could be used, but of >> course it would then be necessary to maintain synchronization >> with the original version. > Which may not be such a trivial thing to do: > > aldar portage # cat sci-libs/gsl/ChangeLog|grep \* > *gsl-1.8 (11 Apr 2006) > *gsl-1.7 (14 Oct 2005) > *gsl-1.6 (16 Jan 2005) > *gsl-1.4 (28 Dec 2004) > *gsl-1.4 (18 Nov 2003) > *gsl-1.1.1 (12 Jun 2003) > *gsl-1.3 (14 Feb 2003) > *gsl-1.2 (06 Aug 2002) > *gsl-1.0 (1 Feb 2002) > > Expect two new releases per year on average. If anybody is ready to > undertake this, sure, but I think the more realistic aim would be to > have a binding.. Yes. Brian's comment suggests translating the package in order to make the floating type generic(?). Surely this isn't necessary? The most you would want is a thick binding which chose the GSL code for single or double precision according to the precision of the generic parameter. Gnat *may* be able to optimise the instance to eliminate any dead code. And since my name was mentioned higher up the thread, I'm not planning on digging out the few bindings that I made for public use - they were coded without much thought, just to try out GSL in my application. I didn't use them in the end because the routines didn't meet my needs at the time. Perhaps in the future, I will try again, because my needs and the GSL have changed and expanded significantly. A decent binding would probably best work out if someone in the Ada community was actually using GSL in Ada regularly, since they would have working, maintained code as a base. If that's where my coding is likely to go, I'll seriously consider putting it on a public license from the start. -- Adrian