yearly migration
Hello.
Next default C compiler on Debian will be gcc-8.
Most Ada packages already build with trivial changes [1].
Every library will need to rename its -dev and so package.
Such renamings take time because they imply a manual review in the NEW queue.
Please consider updating your packages and uploading them to
experimental, where gnat already depends on gnat-8. Once the dust has
settled there, we will reupload a consistant set to unstable and
hopefully see it quickly migrate to testing.
This is an opportunity to apply unrelated pending changes requiring
package renamings, like packaging a new upstream version [2].
[1] As usual, adacontrol fails because of incompatibilities between
gnat and ASIS. Updating ASIS [2] will hopefully fix this.
[2] Adacore usually updates its GPL packages in may.
By the way...
Until now, Debian has supported the coexistence of different versions
for the default Ada and C compilers. The motivation is to allow a time
window or a release where $adaversion < $cversion, so that gcc does
not need to wait for all Ada packages to update its version.
More and more packages rely on the gprbuild tool.
Currently, gprbuild assumes that all (default) compilers produce the same ABI for all languages.
Any effort by successive maintainers to do better has been wasted for 8 years.
* If the user must configure a compiler version manually, they will complain.
* If the tool selects $cversion, it will find no Ada compiler.
* If the tool selects $adaversion, people writing pure C will want the default C ABI.
I suggest that we stop promising that we support the divergence. As
far as I know, it has been some years since GCC has not been waiting
just for Ada.
Any idea?
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