Re: Why not gnat Ada in gcc?

[dewar at gnat dot com (Robert Dewar)]

<<You're working on free software for the fsf, therefore IMO you ought
to be doing your development in the open if at all possible.  And
clearly (as Cygnus nee Red Hat and Codesourcery demonstrate) it is
not only possible, but not particularly difficult.
>>

Actually from past experiences recently, e.g. with the ia64 port, I have
been struck by how closed the development was. Same thing for gdb5, this
was kept under wraps for a long time. A large company (I won't name names)
that we worked with was essentially operating as though it were under
non-disclosure. Both the ia64 port and gdb5 were sudden massive updates,
and it is hard to see how else it could have been done.

My own feeling is that sometimes it is quite appropriate to keep major
developments "under wraps" until they are in reasonable shape for release,
and that's the way we work at Ada Core Technologies for major incremental
development. For example, the new project file support is rapidly changing,
and until it settles down a bit, it would simply cause massive confusion
to have these changes in the open tree (it has not even settled down enough
to put them in *our* development tree yet).

So we agree, that it is definitely desirable to do the development in
the open to the extent possible. But it is not always possible or
desirable to do so.

Our objective at Ada Core Technologies in working to get the GNAT sources
integrated with the main gcc tree is precisely to make it possible for
more development to be done in the open. I am not quite sure what Jeff 
is arguing for here, are you arguing that you would prefer we NOT make
this effort, if so, that seems a bit peculiar.

Robert Dewar