Re: "Open Core" and the Ada Community

[Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>]

* Jacob Sparre Andersen:

> You are probably right about this.  If we can manage to get there with
> GNAT (or another Ada compiler), I can't see how the specific choice of
> Open Source licence will matter much, since there will be a real cost
> (lost man-power) if one walls in the development.
>
> But who has the spare time to learn enough to contribute to GNAT?

It's a strategic decision to go down that right, it doesn't have to be
spare time.

> How large is GNAT?

The front end and build tools appear to be around 360 kSLOC of Ada,
plus 240 kSLOC for the libraries (which includes some 10 kSLOC of C
sources).  It's all in one directory, so I had to use file-name-based
heuristics to separate the library sources.

The interface to the GCC middle-end is 20 kSLOC of C++.

The GCC middle-end itself is a further 650 KSLOC of C++.  Back-ends
vary in size from 10 kSLOC to 90 kSLOC (the latter is the one for i386
and x86_64, unfortunately).

GCC is fairly modular.  It is possible to make useful changes even if
you do not know exactly what you are doing.  There's code review
before you are allowed to commit anything.