Re: Ada (Was: GCC 3.0 Release Criteria)

[Joe Buck <jbuck at possibly dot synopsys dot com>]

>     It would be wise to discuss the integrations issues on this list since
>     ultimately this group is going to be affected by those changes and may
>     have opinions/ideas on how to make it go more smoothly.

Richard Kenner writes:
> Sorry for the confusion.  The issues aren't techincal at all: all
> needed GCC changes have already been checked in.  I'm talking about
> the issues raised by the *size* of GNAT's sources and how to
> coordinate it with the GNAT/Linux project's tree.

If GNAT works without any patches to other gcc sources when 3.0 is
released, then it doesn't seem that there is anything else left to be done
(I hadn't realized that Kenner had made so much progress on integration
with the current GCC tree).  Given GNAT's large size and the smaller
number of interested people (compared to C and C++), and the fact that the
bootstrap process cannot build it (the front end is written in Ada so you
need an Ada compiler such as an earlier version of GNAT to build it) I
don't think it's really that desirable to physically put the GNAT source
into the GCC tree.

Rather, it would suffice to include pointers on the gcc web site and
documentation to the corresponding information for GNAT, so that
interested people could load it.