On Monday, April 23, 2012 15:54:05 Walter F.J. Mueller wrote:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg3580441.html
> 
> which apparently states that ghdl was dropped of the upcoming Ubuntu
> 12.04 release because it depended on gnat-4.4, which was dropped. Ubuntu
> 12.04 includes gnat, but in version 4.6 not 4.4.
> 
> Would be pretty sad when ghdl is dropped of Ubuntu 12.04 because
> this is an LTS release which is maintained for a long time, and
> thus will be used in production environments.

Sadly, Debian has the same problem (or rather, is really the source of it). 
I am the Debian maintainer of the GHDL package in Debian, which is where 
Ubuntu derives theirs. 

Part of the problem is also multiarch compatibility. GHDL doesn't have to be 
multiarch, but has to build on machines with multiarch capability, which 
requires to be based on a new gcc-core. Based on past experience with GHDL 
rebasing which GCC it uses, being able to compile with a new GNAT falls out 
of that pretty easily.

Ubuntu has a incredibly intrusive multiarch patch (to the GHDL package's 
gcc-core, not to GHDL code) which I have been reluctant to pull into Debian 
because it's rather unmaintainable and I've had problems with it on a couple 
architectures. It basically pulls in the multiarch support from gcc-4.6-core 
and backports it to the existing gcc-4.3.4-core.

I've been hoping that a new GHDL release would come out that was based on a 
new GCC, but so far the status quo is going to be that GHDL is dropped from 
Debian, which means it will also be dropped from Ubuntu (and probably all 
other Debian derivatives).

If anyone wants to help on the GHDL upstream side, that would be awesome. 
I've asked about it a couple times but it sounds like everyone is busy (I 
understand -- I am ALSO very busy! =)

I strongly believe this is an issue that needs to be resolved in GHDL itself 
so that all distributions and platforms can benefit rather than something 
that should be hacked into Debian, Ubuntu (or Fedora, SUSE, etc) packages.

That said, if anyone thinks there is an easy solution to get building with 
gnat-4.6 (actually, gnat-4.7 would be preferred as of now) and have it not 
regress on any currently supported Debian architectures. The GHDL Debian 
(and via Debian, Ubuntu, and other derivatives) specific-packaging is help 
in Debian's Alioth (git) repository at:

git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/ghdl.git

Please take a close look (or ask questions) before starting in on it to make 
sure you understand how the branches work otherwise the result will be 
unmergeable.

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