Re: Some important packages have been orphaned

[Brian May <bam@debian.org>]

On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 09:50:25AM +0200, Jérôme Marant wrote:
> > So now, the old version of gnat has one bug (renames clause
> > breaks controlled types) that has been confirmed by the maintainer
> > (IIRC). This is easy to work around by replacing renames with :=.
> 
>   Is is going to be fixed in GCC CVS?

If you mean GCC 3.1, it is already fixed.

> > The new version of gnat also has one bug: sin, cos, etc are broken and do
> > not work.
> 
>   I intended to ask some questions about the future of GNAT in
>   gcc cvs; they may tell us about their plan.
>   There are quite some other important bugs: it seems that you
>   cannot compile libraries as dynamic libraries.

I am not sure compiling Ada as dynamic libraries is a good idea, full
stop.

My impression is although API compatability is an important factor in
the specifications, ABI compatability was not.

So, when compiling 3rd party packages, especially 3rd party generic
packages, the compiler will try to access the source *.adb package to
create an instant of the class[1].

I think I also read a discussion here on debian-devel that the Ada
compiler can also inline code from that *.adb file, too. (IIRC I think
there was an inline pragma to enable this for individual functions, so
it might be OK if used correctly).

Which in turn means that part of the code is being used in the compiled
program, not the library. Upgrade the library to a new version, and
I think the two parts of the code could end up being incompatable.

However, this is only the impression I get, I may be completely
mistaken...

Compiling shared libraries is important, so maybe something can be done
about these issues (which I think are compiler issues, not language
issues), assuming that they are real issues, and have not already been
resolved.

> > I gather that the newer version of gnat must have other problems
> > too, because I have been told it fails the tests, but I haven't
> > encountered any other problems myself.
> 
>   Furthermore, there are no regression tests yet.
> 
>   Speaking about GDB, there seems to be someone not from ACT who
>   is working on the Ada support in GDB. I don't know when it will
>   be ready for release in GDB.

Good. At least it is being worked on.

Note:
[1] somebody once told me that Gnat can reuse the code created for
generics; however, I have seen documentation (old) on gdb with Ada
patches that says that seperate code is used for each instance. I
am not sure which story is now the accurate one.
-- 
Brian May <bam@debian.org>