Bug#986400: lintian: false positive about permissions for read-only GNAT .ali files
> Thanks! Why are ADA libraries installed with non-standard permissions,
> please? A quick online search turned up only this reasoning. [1] Why
> is that not a bug in GNAT, please?
Why is that a bug in the first place, please?
In GNAT, the compiler also deals with dependencies and rebuild order.
The .ali files contain the dependency information required to detect
if a .o is more recent than the closure of all sources it depends
upon, or if it should be rebuilt.
By convention, a read-only .ali file tells GNAT to fail if the .o is
obsolete or unavailable, instead of attempting to rebuild. This is
recommended for packaged libraries (the .so or .a are available but
not the .o files).
This convention may seem bizarre according to modern standards, but it
has been in use for 25 years, so Adacore would probably need a
compelling reason to break it.
For more Debian context:
https://people.debian.org/~lbrenta/debian-ada-policy.html#Ada-Library-Information-files-2
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