> Thanks! Why are ADA libraries installed with non-standard permissions, > please? A quick online search turned up only this reasoning. [1] Why > is that not a bug in GNAT, please?
Why is that a bug in the first place, please? In GNAT, the compiler also deals with dependencies and rebuild order. The .ali files contain the dependency information required to detect if a .o is more recent than the closure of all sources it depends upon, or if it should be rebuilt. By convention, a read-only .ali file tells GNAT to fail if the .o is obsolete or unavailable, instead of attempting to rebuild. This is recommended for packaged libraries (the .so or .a are available but not the .o files). This convention may seem bizarre according to modern standards, but it has been in use for 25 years, so Adacore would probably need a compelling reason to break it. For more Debian context: https://people.debian.org/~lbrenta/debian-ada-policy.html#Ada-Library-Information-files-2
