Re: Building the 2021 source release of GnatStudio

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On 2021-07-29 13:33, Stéphane Rivière wrote:
>> First, never ever use Python!
> 
> If scripting capabilities are needed in GnatStudio, why not use HAC ?
> https://github.com/zertovitch/hac
> 
> We use it at $job on a daily basis, replacing all our Bash and PHP
> scripting stuff...
> 
> Seven times faster than Bash, tons times powerfull and maintanable and,
> even better, HAC source can be GNAT compiled from scratch (without
> changing a line). There is also a shebang to ease scripting like with
> any other scripting language...

Nothing of the shell sort. I think it is a major confusion on the side 
of developers of Ada scripts.

For scripting an Ada application one needs support of

1. Loadable modules/packages, prebuilt, to call back to the Ada 
application subprograms provided by the module/package;
2. Passing Ada in/out parameters down to a script's subprogram upon 
invocation;
3. Returning parameters from the script's subprogram;
4. Precompiled script modules, GPS would use a huge number of scripts, 
compiling them each time would be expensive;
5. Abortable calls and propagation of exceptions out of the script;
6. Concurrent script run-time with independent instances.

For example, this is what I use Python for, and this is just the same 
case as in GPS:

    http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de/ada/max_home_automation.htm#5.1

The user script refers to a preloaded module that offers communication 
channel back to the application, e.g. GPS script interface.

In my case the script is called periodically and returns a persistent 
object, which is passed down by the next call. Such objects must be 
managed by the caller (the application).

And I load Python dynamically to break dependency on it.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de