From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.6 (2021-04-09) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.1 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00,FROM_SUSPICIOUS_NTLD, FROM_SUSPICIOUS_NTLD_FP,PDS_OTHER_BAD_TLD autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.6 Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!aioe.org!QeSZwl4tgN8DcItoecWTtQ.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Fernando Oleo Blanco Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: GCC release notes, aka, Ada is still alive! Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2021 20:41:18 +0200 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="50149"; posting-host="QeSZwl4tgN8DcItoecWTtQ.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org"; User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/91.2.0 X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2 Content-Language: en-US Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:62957 List-Id: Hi everybody, I have been meaning to write this message for a long while, so here it goes. Reading Phoronix [1] for years, I noticed that with every new GCC release, the biggest changes to GCC and its languages were mentioned. However, Ada was pretty much never present. Today, just a few moments ago in #netbsd, someone asked whether Ada had finally been dropped out of GCC... I am not even mad. GCC's release notes have not mentioned Ada since GCC 8 [2], [3], [4]; and even in GCC 7 and 8 the notes are minute. So I would like to ask whether someone would like to help me get release notes ready. I am not saying that I will be doing much, but I would like to breath some fresh air into how Ada is seen and how much people hear about it. I personally do not like marketing since good products stand on their merits, not slogans or shininess. But there is no reason to not put publicly what is going on. Yes, AdaCore has been doing some very nice followups to the development of Ada in their blog [5]. But the people that go there, are already aware of Ada. And since AdaCore is phasing out their GNAT CE system in favour of FSF builds (included in Alire), the relevance of GCC's releases grows. Note, I am not implying that AdaCore should write the releases. They are doing the bulk of work in GNAT, so I do not think they _need_ to do more. Personally I am glad with what they are doing, but of course, they can write the releases if they so want. I am specially saddened by the fact that GCC has gotten a substantial amount of support for Ada 2022 and it is not even mentioned. No wonder why people think Ada is dead! So, if you have any recommendation, or would like to help, then you are more than welcomed! P.S.: I am already doing my part GNAT in NetBSD x86_64 is working! It has 9 failed ACATS tests, but they are minor. A thousand thanks go to J. Marino and Tobiasu for their enormous help in #ada. Today I will see if I can compile it for armv6 and run it on my RPi! [1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=home [2] https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-7/changes.html [3] https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-8/changes.html [4] https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-9/changes.html [5] https://blog.adacore.com/ -- Fernando Oleo Blanco https://irvise.xyz