Re: Standard Library Interest?

[Stephen Leake <Stephe.Leake@nasa.gov>]

"Stephane Richard" <stephane.richard@verizon.net> writes:

> > Even if it were not distributed with compilers, having everything in one
> > place as "The Ada Library" rather than bits and pieces here and there,
> > it would be a great improvement over what we have now.
> >
> 
> I like the sound of that.  We'd need a central place where all reusable
> libraries, maybe that could be a good addition to Ada World (The Ada Oracle)
> perhaps for a name :-)  or simply the Ada Library and I could host them all,
> without a problem. :-).

www.adapower.com tried that, with very limited success. Before that,
www.adahome.com had a similar idea. How is your site going to be
better?

Part of the problem is that just because an Ada package is on a web
site doesn't mean it's a _good_ Ada package. So people don't want to
use it. 

The Ada APIWG has the same issue; they need to do lots of reviewing of
packages in order to give some value added, so people have a reason to
trust the code. However, they have no way to pay people for the time
spent reviewing, so it won't happen.

I try to address this with my code by including unit tests. That
doesn't seem to be enough.

> I'd like some input on this from people. See for instance,
> 
> 1. what could be part of it?  

Anything anyone ever found useful; someone else will need that same
thing again. 

Of course, that leads to lots of code, and you need a really smart
search engine to find anything. Which is another problem plaguing
adapower.com; the search engine isn't very smart. 

> do we limit ourselves to platform independant
> reusable libraries?

Not "limit", but certainly state a "preference", and include that info
in the searchable keywords.

> 2. Do we include such things as AdaCL and such data structure based
> libraries?

Of course. They are useful. But allow all of them; Booch, Charles,
SAL, Grace, etc.

> 3. Do we go OS specific in different fields.  For example.  A binding to
> PDCurses, one for conio to allow for specific functionalities available on
> each OS/Platform?

If someone finds it useful, then yes.

> And others too, what would you guys put in The Ada Library ? And
> why...see if we can filter out a list that could please everyone.

Why should we "please everyone"?! The only person that needs to be
"pleased" is the person that finds something useful in the library,
and manages to use it, saving development time. If that person turns
out to be "everyone", so much the better.

The fact that some people like Charles, and would never use SAL, and
other people make the opposite choice, is an argument for including
_both_ Charles and SAL, not for excluding both!


If you are suggesting some sort of review process, where people commit
time to reviewing and approving stuff that goes into the library, then
you do need to get agreement on what deserves reviewing. That's what
the ARG is doing for proposed additions to the Ada standard. Those
guys are getting paid (at least in part) to do that. If you want a
reviewed library, you need to pay the reviewers, in some way; it's a
lot of work.

One way to pay reviewers is to get the companies they work for to
allow them to spend company time reviewing code. I could do that for
some packages that are related to my work; anyone else out there in
the same situation?

-- 
-- Stephe