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From: Natasha Kerensikova <lithiumcat@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: How to nicely distribute a simple Ada library?
Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2011 11:19:49 +0000 (UTC)
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Date: 2011-12-04T11:19:49+00:00
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Hello,

sorry for spamming you again, and for the arrogance of thinking anyone
might possibly want to use my code, but I'm wondering what is the best
way to distribute a library (once it's ready for release) written in
Ada.

I have found the packaging policies for Debian, which is very complete
and useful, and for Fedora, which seems nice too but less interesting
for upstream. And I would like to eventually maintain a FreeBSD port.

So my first question is, since the policies say to include in the
package all the body and specification files required to compile
something against the library, but not the others, how can I know which
files are required and which are not?

The policies also ask for a .gpr file used for building programs against
the library, which seems different from the .gpr file used to build the
library itself. Should I, as upstream, try to provide both of them, or
should I leave the former .gpr file to the packager?

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?

And while all the above assumes a GNAT toolchain, there are probably
people using other compiles. I guess I cannot really support all Ada
compilers that exist (especially those to which I don't have access), so
the burden for porting the library to their toolchain is probably
theirs, but is there any step I should to make it easier for them?

And lastly, is there anything else I should know to make my libraries
easier to use for packagers and users?


Thanks for your help,
Natasha