[gtkada] Patch: Add a command variable for Python.

[Emmanuel Briot]

> I work to make Ada more readily available to programmers. To
> programmers working in other languages there are lots of libraries and
> tools available and ready to use. Just do a simple "yum install" and
> start hacking. I want Ada to have that advantage too. To that end I
> package Ada libraries in Fedora, and to do that I have to follow
> Fedora's policies. Packaging Adacore's software takes a relatively
> large amount of work because of the radically different philosophies,
> but I do my best to keep GTKada and the packages that depend on it from
> dropping out of Fedora.
> 
> If you think Fedora's philosophy is wrong, then you may write to
> packaging at lists.fedoraproject.org and try to convince the Fedora
> Packaging Committee that yours is better. I'm not going to act as a
> courier in that debate.


You are overreacting here, I believe. 
Everybody certainly appreciates the work you are doing to make Ada more
easily usable on Fedora (and the similar work done on other linux distributions).
We have, by the way, included most of the suggested patches you submitted in
the past, just for the purpose of simplifying your work (they play no role in our
own packaging).

In this context, you have decided to ignore the feedback that several people have
given you (including non-AdaCore people). This is of course your choice, and we
respect it.

To explain again: the sources of GtkAda are *not* the C libraries, of course, nor
are they the GIR files. The GIR files are an intermediate step which we, as the
GtkAda developers, use to bootstrap the GtkAda binding. But the generated Ada
sources are then reviewed (carefully for the most critical of them, and a bit faster
for the others) before we check them in.

If you had worked with the GIR files, you would know how much semantic
information they are missing, which results in overlay complex binding.py (a
problem that is also plaguing all over bindings like pygobject for instance).

The python scripting binding.py is not meant for use by everyone who want to
recompile GtkAda, or we would simply package it up, and not include any of the
generated Ada sources. The script is only known to work with a specific python
version, and a specific GIR file. Anything outside of this environment is untested
and unmaintained.

AdaCore's policy is to distribute software that has been tested. Before the GPL
release is made available on the internet, it has been used extensively in
AdaCore's own software, as well as by our customers. So this guarantees at
least some quality, which you could not do if you restart from scratch.

Fedora's policy of recompiling from source is good. You and we just don't agree
on the definition of "source" (to which Fedora has nothing to say, by the way)

But again, the final choice is yours, as the Fedora maintainer.

regards
Emmanuel