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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Building the 2021 source release of GnatStudio
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2021 19:21:59 -0500
Organization: JSA Research & Innovation
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"Luke A. Guest" <laguest@archeia.com> wrote in message 
news:sdtmk1$jl4$1@gioia.aioe.org...
>
> On 29/07/2021 01:49, Randy Brukardt wrote:
>
>> Since the "main Ada IDE" isn't even an Ada program (primarily being
>> programmed in Python), I'm not sure what it has to do with the 
>> reliability
>> of Ada programs. If someone built an all-Ada IDE, then that might make 
>> more
>> sense. And in any case, programs like an IDE are almost always installed
>> from binary packages.
>
> Some people still have to build them.

True enough, but that hardly changes anything. Unless a program is a single 
collection of source in a single programming language, pretty much any 
builds range from difficult to impossible. You have dependences on 
libraries, on unfamiliar build tools, on scripts written for some other 
target, etc. This is generally a complex problem to which there is unlikely 
to ever be a good general solution.

Tucker described this sort of problem as one where there is a lump under a 
carpet. You can move the lump around (hopefully to the edge), but you can't 
get rid of it without fully replacing the carpet (which quite likely will 
result in a new issue of some sort). There are of course tools that help one 
set of users and problems, but they then create even more problems when you 
reach the limits of what they can do (especially for the uninitiated).

                           Randy.