GNAT packages in Linux distributions
in [ADA]
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From: Björn Persson on 9 May 2010 21:40 Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote: > For more than a year I has been using either GNAT Pro or GNAT GPL. > Recently I installed Fedora and Debian GNAT distributions and discovered > that basically all two years old bugs known to me are still present. Some > of these bugs were fixed in GNAT GPL 2009, others in GNAT Pro 6.3. > > So my question is: is there any information or summary on the Web about > how Linux distributions are related to AdaCore releases? Or maybe somebody > knowledgeable could create and maintain this as a wiki etc. I don't think Fedora has a written policy or some such for how compilers are packaged, but as far as I know they take a GCC release from the FSF, add a few patches related to C, C++ and Java, and compile it with all languages enabled. I get the impression that GNAT is in Fedora only because it's part of GCC. That means that before a bugfix from AdaCore ends up in a Fedora release, it must first be part of a merge from AdaCore to the FSF's code tree. I've heard that they merge only to the trunk during development stage 1. Some time later the FSF makes a release branch from the trunk and refines the branch into a release. Then the Fedora packagers upgrade the GCC package in Rawhide, the development repository, to the new release, which again is done only in an early development stage as it can be a fairly disruptive change. Later Rawhide is branched, and the branch goes through months of testing and bug-fixing and eventually becomes the next Fedora release. Naturally this process takes a long time. Fedora 13 Beta has GCC 4.4.3. I think we'll probably see GCC 4.5 in Fedora 14, but at the moment Rawhide is at 4.4.4. -- Bj�rn Persson PGP key A88682FD
From: Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) on 9 May 2010 22:04 Thanks for these detailed explanations, > That means that before a bugfix from AdaCore ends up in a Fedora > release, it > must first be part of a merge from AdaCore to the FSF's code tree. I've > heard that they merge only to the trunk during development stage 1. What does âStage 1â stands for exactly ? What happens and what's done on this Stage 1 ? -- No-no, this isn't an oops ...or I hope (TM) - Don't blame me... I'm just not lucky
From: Ludovic Brenta on 10 May 2010 03:01 Yannick Duchêne writes on comp.lang.ada: > Thanks for these detailed explanations, > >> That means that before a bugfix from AdaCore ends up in a Fedora >> release, it >> must first be part of a merge from AdaCore to the FSF's code tree. I've >> heard that they merge only to the trunk during development stage 1. > What does “Stage 1” stands for exactly ? What happens and what's done > on this Stage 1 ? See http://gcc.gnu.org/develop.html The delay between the end of Stage 1 and the official release of GCC was typically between 8 and 10 months up to GCC 4.3; for GCC 4.4 and 4.5 the developers decided to skip Stage 2 entirely and this reduced the delay to 5 months in GCC 4.4 and 6 months in GCC 4.5. This delay accounts for part of the delay between a bug fix in GNAT Pro and the corresponding bug fix in the next GCC release. However, some bug fixes are backported into the previous release and into Debian, so they become available as early as practical. -- Ludovic Brenta.
From: Dmitry A. Kazakov on 10 May 2010 03:54 On Sun, 09 May 2010 23:44:39 +0100, Simon Wright wrote: > "Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene(a)yahoo.fr> writes: > >> P.P.S. I wonder why, being an owner of a GNAT Pro license, you need >> the GPL version ? You will get just less with the GPL version. > > I expect that very few private individuals have a GNAT Pro support > contract! Yes. As for me, I have GNAT Pro at work. The things I do privately I check against GNAT Pro. When I publish them I try to find a workaround in the GPL version. I do not report bugs from my private work to AdaCore, unless they also appear in the software our company develops. However there is a fair overlap, i.e. when AdaCore fixes one, that also fixes another. As I can judge GNAT Pro 6.3.x is pretty good by now. > When developing open-source software, I wouldn't want to say to > potential users such as yourself "my library works fine with GNAT Pro, > too bad it doesn't work with GNAT GPL". Exactly. -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de
From: Dmitry A. Kazakov on 10 May 2010 04:02
On Sun, 09 May 2010 23:28:26 +0200, Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57) wrote: > I was to report some bugs as well about GNAT (there was some about > protected types, that's why your words make me though about it, however, > there some others as well), and gave up to send bug reports when I've > learned from people using the Pro version those bugs were already fixed > for long. > > Yes, it seems obvious the differences between GNAT Pro and GNAT GPL are > not only a matter of support (or lack of support) or of license > (commercial application allowed vs disallowed) : it seems these are two > different compilers. I don't think so. GPL looks like an outdated Pro. The real problem is that FSF is a "very outdated Pro," back to the times when GNAT was quite unstable (judging on the code I am writing). Maybe FSF will gain in 1-2 years, but then Ada 2012 will appear, breaking it again. Lack of a stable free compiler is a serious problem for Ada. -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de |