Re: Why not gnat Ada in gcc?

[dewar at gnat dot com (Robert Dewar)]

<<Making RPMs is not part of a GNU maintainer's duties.  Our preferred
version of GNU/Linux is Debian, so we should give Debian developers
full cooperation, but we normally don't tell GNU package maintainers
that they themselves should make the Debian packages (though they can
do that job too if they want to).
>>

OK, that's what I thought. At the same time, making RPM's is definitely
useful, and in fact we are planning to do this for the next release.

<<However, Guerby's message suggested that there are other issues
involved, that this is not just a matter of making packages.
>>

Well there are technical issues as I mentioned (shared libraries working
completely, and Linux threads eing the default).

We have now solved the shared library problems (the GNAT for GNU/Linux
folksw issued shared libraries before they were working fully). We have not
yet got to the stage where
we are sure that it is a good idea to use Linux Threads (always hard to
know how to refer to something like this, if you say GNU/Linux Threads then
people will think you are talking about a different package, since the author 
called this package Linux Threads) by default.

But anyway, there are no issues I know of that are significant.

<<Anyway, would you please ask the people who make RPMs for the various
versions of GNU/Linux to please call their work "GNAT for GNU/Linux"?


I will definitely point this out. It is hard to persuade people to say
Redhat GNU/Linux, since this is really incorfrect, Redhat makes a software
product that has the title "Redhat Linux" and it is not really for others
to unilaterally change the name of another companies product. The important
thing which you certainly can insist on is that people use the phrase
GNU/Linux when they are talking ageneraly about the collection of systems.

Mind you, this is a very indepednet group, and all I can do is to ask, and
explain why I am asking. I know that there is opposition to this naming
from at least some peopel in that group.

I do try to make sure that ACT folks use the phrase GNU/Linux always, and
if you see mistakes from any ACT folks, you may assume that (a) it is a
slipup, and (b) it is fine to remind us.

What I find in practice is that people think that GNU/Linux is a special
version of Linux. I sometimes wonder whether it would be good idea to
simply make this happen ....

Robert