Re: ACATS legal status cleared by FSF

[dewar@gnat.com]

<<If your compiler randomly changes around where messages come out all
the time, maybe you should re-engineer it from the top down, fix all
of them to be correct, once, fix the testcases in the testsuite to
conform to it, and then refuse any changes to this status quo for 5-10
years, and then after 5 years, put in all the changes enmass you would
like, redo the testsuite, lather, rise, repeat.
>>

It is not at all a matter of "randomly changing around where messages
come out all the time". Rather it is a matter of constantly improving
the messages (something that would be welcome in all compilers :-)
and each time such improvement occurs, it can discombobulate the baselines,
and require fairly painstaking adjustments. Of course we have to do these
adjustments at ACT, but the real point is that it would be a mistake
to make the B tests a barrier to development. The B tests of Ada are
really quite unlikely any other test suite I have seen for any other language,
so I would definitely advise becoming thoroughly familiar with these tests
before being too sure you know the answers.

Notice the pattern here. Among those who are familiar with the ACATS B
tests there is a consensus that it is not obvious that they are of value
in our context. It is those who do not know the suite who are sure they
must be of great value :-)