Re: Ada policy

[Zack Weinberg <zack@codesourcery.com>]

Robert Dewar <dewar@gnat.com> writes:

> Zack Weinberg wrote:
>
>> Robert Dewar <dewar@gnat.com> writes:
>>
>>>Reading Zack's message:
>>>
>>>>Second, the Ada maintainers have said in the past that they
>>>>deliberately break source compatibility between releases (such that
>>>>GCC 3.x with Ada is only guaranteed to be buildable with GCC 3.(x-1)).
>>>
>>>That's entirely wrong. Nothing is broken deliberately, and no one
>>>ever said anything of the kind.
>> I disagree; that *is*, in fact, what is said or at least strongly
>> implied by messages like
>> <http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2002-05/msg00086.html>:
>
> No, it definitely is NOT said here. There is absolutely nothing
> there about deliberately breaking source compatibility. I can't
> imagine how you manage this strange reading.

Whereas I cannot imagine how you manage to miss what is a clear
implication of the text of that message.

I'm willing to accept what you say now as a statement of a changed
policy, though.

> Just so things are clear, we start our nightly runs with several
> different older versions of the compiler precisely to make sure we
> retain as much compatibility with old versions as possible for
> builds.

I am very glad to hear this.  A further step forward would be to
state which older versions those are, what your policies are for
selecting those older versions, and when the set might change.

>> I'd also add that personally, I consider my third requirement
>> (patch submission according to the same requirements binding 
>> on all other contributors) to be much more important than the 
>> one you chose to discuss.
>
> You must be missing some messages in this thread, since that has
> most certainly been discussed by me and others.

Test cases has been discussed at length, but the other ways in which
ACT does not follow the patch submission requirements have not been
discussed at all.

zw