Re: libgnatcoll & libgnatprj?

[Nicolas Boulenguez <nicolas@debian.org>]

Matthias Klose:
> I was reading https://tracker.debian.org/news/794344,
>    Replace libgnatprj/vsn, dropped by GCC with libgpr from gprbuild.
> why? libgnatprj/vsn, dropped by GCC is not true. Or are there plans not to use
> libgnatprj/vsn anymore?

Hello.

Ludovic has created Debian-specific libraries to avoid duplication of
source code between the compiler and other packages.
- internal compiler structures (libgnatvsn)
- compiler support for projects (libgnatprj)
Years after that, Adacore has roughly taken the same decision.
- The Debian libgnatvsn produced by the GCC/GNAT source package
  is renamed libgpr and produced by the gprbuild source package.
- the few remaining duplicates covered by gnatvsn do probably not
  motivate gnatvsn any more.

Gnat-6 prints a warning saying: project support will be removed in
next version, and next Debian gcc will probably not be able to build
gnatprj/vsn.  Adacore packages formerly embedding code have migrated
to libgpr with the 2016 summer release (some of them use libgpr
indirectly via gnatcoll).

So the right thing to do in Debian is probably to go on producing
vsn/prj for end users as long as possible, but update all packaged
reverse dependencies.

Most of the work is done in experimental, but we have a big problem
with gnat-gps.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-ada/2016/08/msg00006.html
Gnat-gps is also in bad shape in unstable, so I suggest that we remove
it from Debian until someone is able to fix it.

I am working on ASIS, and we may be able to update (or at least
recompile, because a new source version is not required to be
compatible with gpr) the few remaining packages before the freeze:
adabrowse, libaunit and adacontrol.

Any idea or help is of course welcome.