Re: Why not gnat Ada in gcc?

[Jeffrey A Law <law at cygnus dot com>]

  In message <10010120018.AA00642@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu>you write:
  > Ada is a very complex language and one which is understood to that
  > extent by very few people and those few people nearly all work for Ada
  > compiler vendors.  So I don't accept that putting GNAT sources in the
  > repository will magically make such expertese appear.
But it would make it possible for folks to build & test it over time.  ie
you'll be able to say "oh, that change addressed an Ada bug that is in the
regression testsuite", so before you twiddle that code any further make
sure that your change doesn't regress the Ada compiler.

And fundamentally ACT policy of having *exclusive* access to the GNAT
sources is counter to the principles of open development of free
software IMHO.

  > In any event, it will *always* be the case that merges are necessary
  > since ACT can't use the GCC repository copy as its main development
  > compiler for the same reasons that Cygnus couldn't do it for GCC.
*BUT* we didn't do bulk merges *into* the official sources.  That
*IS* what ACT does with the GNAT tree.

Cygnus/Red Hat has the same kind of access anyone else does as far as
GCC is concerned.  That is definitely not true for GNAT development.

jeff