Re: Gnu Emacs Ada mode 7.1.6 released.

[Fernando Oleo Blanco <irvise_ml@irvise.xyz>]

I am sorry for the spam Stephen. I am getting used to these systems 
(first time using USENET). I wanted to respond publicly.
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Thank you for the update Stephen.

I can confirm that it works with GNAT community 2021. It is the first
time I got it working.

However, a couple of comments. I could not use the build.sh script
directly. The line

WISI_DIR=`ls -d ../wisi*`

matches everything named wisi. In my case it is the following:

../wisi-3.1.5         ../wisitoken-grammar-mode-1.2.0
../wisi-3.1.5.signed  ../wisitoken-grammar-mode-1.2.0.signed

The *.signed entries are files, which screw with gprclean/build. So I
had to run each command manually. That is not a big issue for me, but as
you can understand, it can easily be a headache to a lot of people. For
that reason I would like to propose a small change. The wisitoken
package uses a slightly modified ls command:

export GPR_PROJECT_PATH=`ls -d ../wisi-3.1.?`

This type of pattern matching would solve the issue of finding too many
things. I would change the WISI_DIR entry to

WISI_DIR=`ls -d ../wisi-?.?.?`

Which ensures that only the directory of the package is matched. As far
as I know, the ? pattern matching is POSIX compliant, so it should work
in pretty much any $SHELL.

The second proposal would be to, instead of asking the user to run the
commands directly, that an elisp function is used. For example, the
package pdf-tools requires some compilation in order to use it. It comes
with the elisp function

(pdf-tools-install)

which installs the package, and it is pretty obvious to the user. It
also comes with

(pdf-loader-install)

which is recommended to be used in the configuration file. This function
checks whether the package has already been compiled/installed properly
at boot. If it is, then Emacs just loads it, if not, it gets compiled. I
think this is a much more user friendly experience, it would simplify
the installation process.

In the case of ada-mode, if the compilation fails, some report could be
emitted, such as "No Ada compiler found.", "The GNATCOLL dependencies
have to be installed previous to the compilation, please refer to XXX."
and finally "Compilation failed, please see the compilation
window."/"Compilation successful.". A function the style

(load-or-install-ada-mode)

could be created for this and the user could be requested to run it. Or
when ada-mode is called, that function could be executed. That way even
if the user is not aware of the compilation step, they are informed.
Instead of getting a cryptic wisi error message.

Thank you for your work and fixing the issue with the newer versions of
the compilers!

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Fernando Oleo Blanco
https://irvise.xyz