[gps-devel] gps compile.

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic.brenta at insalien.org>]

GPS uses some packages of the GNAT library which are only present in
GCC 3.4.  Also, GPS contains a copy of much of GNAT's facilities for
project files, including the famous "pretty printer" part wich is not
in GNAT 3.15p but only in GCC 3.4.

For Debian, I had to copy several source files from GCC 3.4 into the
GPS sources to get GPS to compile.  I did not have to recompile GNAT
itself, but the effort required to get GPS to compile with GNAT 3.15p
was not trivial at all (approximately 70 hours' work).  BTW, this
means that the statement, on the GPS home page, that "you need GNAT >=
3.15" is not entirely true.

I find it unfortunate that GPS will not compile out of the box with
the current public release of GNAT, 3.15p.  I have had this problem
with several other source packages maintained by ACT.  For example, I
see that PolyORB has never been tested with 3.15p, but only with
3.16a1, 5.02a and GCC 3.4.0.  At the same time, other packages are
built specifically against GNAT 3.15p; namely, ASIS, Glade and
Florist.

I clearly see this as a problem.  comp.lang.ada, fr.comp.lang.ada, and
the various mailing lists regularly receive queries from people trying
to build one or the other package from source, and failing because of
this issue.  As a result, only the most dedicated die-hard Ada fans
will do the effort to get everything configured properly.

I can see three alternative solutions:

- Use GNAT 3.15p for all software released to the public by ACT

- Release a newer public release of GNAT (perhaps 5.02a would be a
  suitable candidate for becoming public?)

- Update ASIS, Glade and Florist for use with GCC 3.4, and use it as
  the default compiler for all software released to the public by ACT.

Any one of these solutions would make life _much_ easier for everyone
who wants to use this software and contribute to it, or for
distribution maintainers like myself.

Currently, in Debian I have adopted the first solution but this costs
me a lot of effort for some packages.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.


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