* What about GCC support for ADA ?
@ 2020-08-21 8:59 divoplade
2020-08-21 17:52 ` Timothy Sample
0 siblings, 1 reply; 2+ messages in thread
From: divoplade @ 2020-08-21 8:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: help-guix
Hello all,
Recently I was introduced to the ada programming language. I wanted to
give it a try. As the FSF had a certain role in the development of a
compiler, I thought it would be best showcased in guix. However, it is
not installed with gcc-toolchain (I am on a foreign distribution).
Are there deep reasons why it is disabled? It seems to me that the
objective C variant is in a separate package, so maybe it could be as
simple as making a derivative package for ada. Is there a bootstrapping
problem for instance?
Best regards
divoplade
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 2+ messages in thread
* Re: What about GCC support for ADA ?
2020-08-21 8:59 What about GCC support for ADA ? divoplade
@ 2020-08-21 17:52 ` Timothy Sample
0 siblings, 0 replies; 2+ messages in thread
From: Timothy Sample @ 2020-08-21 17:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: divoplade; +Cc: help-guix
Hi divoplade,
divoplade <d@divoplade.fr> writes:
> Recently I was introduced to the ada programming language. [...]
> However, it is not installed with gcc-toolchain (I am on a foreign
> distribution).
>
> Are there deep reasons why it is disabled? [...] Is there a
> bootstrapping problem for instance?
That’s the issue, yes.
The GNAT frontend is written in Ada, and can only be built with GNAT.
What makes this worse is that there isn’t a pre-built binary available
for bootstrapping. Adacore Technologies offers a “community” version of
GNAT as a binary, but I think there might be licensing issues. [1]
I wrote code a long while ago that assembles a working GNAT binary from
Debian. It was the best approach I could come up with for getting a
well-established, free software version of GNAT as a binary. It might
be useful if someone wanted to make an Ada channel. The approach was a
little too ugly for Guix proper.
-- Tim
[1] I’m not sure I remember all the details. The Adacore version is
released under the GPL, but I think it lacks the GCC Runtime Library
Exception. This means that the code it produces would have to be
released under the GPL. This might be a problem for compiling GNU GNAT,
since it does contain the exception. Again, my memory is fuzzy here and
I encourage anyone interested to check for themselves.
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2020-08-21 8:59 What about GCC support for ADA ? divoplade
2020-08-21 17:52 ` Timothy Sample
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