Re: GPS plug-ins

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

Stephen Leake writes:
> The next upstream AUnit version (3.1.1) comes with a GPS plug-in file
> 'aunit.xml'.
>
> It gives the path to the AUnit manual aunit.html.
>
> The path is wrong for Debian; it's currently 'share/doc/aunit'; it needs
> to be '/usr/share/doc/libaunit1-dev'. Actually, I'm not clear it needs
> the leading '/usr'.
>
> This plug-in file needs to be installed in the GPS plug-in directory
> /usr/share/gps/plug-ins. 
>
> However, the GPS package already has a file 'aunit.xml' there, that is
> wrong. It also has a 'gprbuild_gps.xml', which tries to point to
> gprbuild documentation, and gets it wrong.
>
> So I think we need a section in the Debian Ada policy on GPS plug-ins.
>
> I propose that GPS _not_ own the plug-in files (except for those that
> support stuff actually provided by GPS); the libaunit package should own
> aunit.xml, gprbuild should own its xml file.
>
> In addition, we might as well state explictly where the GPS plug-in
> directory is, and that the plug-in document link should point to the
> standard Debian documentation location.
>
> One alternative would be to file bugs against GPS for the plug-in files;
> I think it's cleaner to have the plug-ins install everything. That way
> someone can build a new plug-in without requiring a new GPS upload.
>
> Note that the document path contains the aliversion, so a new version of
> an Ada package can require a new plug-in file.

I agree with everything you said in principle.  In fact a couple of
packages already provide GPS plug-ins that are not owned by the package
gnat-gps (i.e. adacontrol, adabrowse).

However, gnat-gps does *not* provide /usr/share/gps/plug-ins/aunit.xml
and neither does libaunit1-dev; if you see such a file, what does "dpkg
-S /usr/share/gps/plug-ins/aunit.xml" say?

A section in the Debian Policy for Ada about GPS plug-ins is a good idea
but it would be quite minimal: list the directory containing plug-ins
and that's pretty much all; the general Debian Policy already forbids
file conflicts.  I think that deciding which plug-ins should be provided
by gnat-gps and which should be provided by other packages should be
done on a case-by-case basis.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.