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Ada in Debian, past, present and future. Request for Advocate.



In July 2003, I adopted the package gnat and several other Ada
packages.  In November 2003, Matthias Klose sponsored my first few
packages into Debian unstable.  After I adopted all the orphaned
packages I could, I created several new packages from sratch.  Now,
all my packages have been released as part of sarge.

I am talking about 18 source packages, 43 binary packages and roughly
2.8 million lines of code according to David A. Wheeler's SLOCCount.
All of these packages are related to Ada.  For the most part, 3
architectures are supported: i386, powerpc and sparc.  As of last
week, I even have a Sun Ultra 2 at home running Debian :)
 
I am the principal maintainer of all versions of GNAT: gnat, gnat-3.3,
gnat-3.4 and gnat-4.0.  The latter three are part of the corresponding
GCC source packages, and I cooperate with the Debian GCC maintainers
on these.  For this reason, Matthias has been kind enough to keep me
in the loop of the discussions on the future default compiler for
etch.  Thank you, Matthias.

In addition to the packages, I have also written the Debian Policy for
Ada[1].  This Policy ensures that all Ada packages use the same ABI,
and work well together; this is particularly important for libraries.

[1] http://www.ada-france.org/debian/debian-ada-policy.html

I host a Debian repository on Ada-France[2]; I use it as a staging
area for Matthias to get my packages and upload them to sid.

[2] deb http://www.ada-france.org/debian ada main

Matthias has been a very good sponsor for me for the past 19 months.
However, his expanded duties now leave him little time to upload my
packages.  He asked me to apply for Debian Developer, and explain my
future plans.

So, my plans are:

1. To continue maintaining my packages.  Bugs, new releases, etc.
   This includes in particular the GNAT which is part of GCC.

2. To upload the Debian Policy for Ada into unstable; after all, the
   Python Policy is already in sarge.

3. Not to make any new packages.  I don't want to spread too thin, and
   I want to do a good job of maintaining my packages.

4. To update the Debian Policy for Ada when appropriate.  As part of
   this, I would like etch to move from GNAT 3.15p to a more recent
   version, but this requires ASIS support which is not yet available.
   This may make it possible to support more architectures.

5. To sponsor and mentor people who would like to help maintain
   Ada-related packages.  In time, such people might prove worthy
   enough that I might advocate them :)

My GPG key has been signed by a Debian Developer:

$ gpg --list-sigs brenta
pub   1024D/9DFFAAD4 2003-07-10
uid                  Ludovic Brenta <ludovic.brenta@insalien.org>
sig 3        9DFFAAD4 2003-07-10  Ludovic Brenta <ludovic.brenta@insalien.org>
sig 3        6783ED5E 2003-08-25  Frederic Peters <fpeters@entrouvert.be>
sub   1024g/751B6557 2003-07-10
sig          9DFFAAD4 2003-07-10  Ludovic Brenta <ludovic.brenta@insalien.org>

I am now looking for an advocate; if you are interested, please visit:

http://nm.debian.org/nmadvocate.php?email=ludovic.brenta%40insalien.org

PS. I don't follow debian-devel; please CC me directly if you reply.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.



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