On Friday, May 25, 2012 13:53:42 Peter Gavin wrote:
> On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 9:34 PM, Allen Taylor
> 
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Like many others, I have given up on Ubuntu (because of the switch from
> > the GNOME desktop to the new Unity), and am having a look at Linux
> > Mint 13. I noticed that GHDL is not available in the standard
> > packages. For that matter, it’s not available in Ubuntu 12.04 either.
> > Any idea when/if the package maintainer will make it available?
> 
> No, Debian dropped it because there was no maintainer.

That hasn't happened yet, but it's a very real risk in the near future.

I am the Debian maintainer, and GHDL has not been yet dropped from Debian.
You can track the package situation at 
http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/ghdl.html

I'm going to maintain it in Debian unstable for as long as possible, and 
hopefully it'll get into stable releases regularly as well. However, I'm not 
sure it will be possible to keep in the upcoming Debian stable (wheezy) 
release without a lot of work, most of which I believe is much more 
appropriate to happen upstream, not just by hacking the Debian package by 
backporting gcc fixes from one gcc-core version to another, which is really 
unsustainable.

I sent out an e-mail about this situtation not long ago. (I've attached it 
FYI). I wish I had time to make upstream contributions, but I really just 
don't. So help is *definitely* welcome, but to make GHDL have a viable 
future, 99% of it needs to be patches upstream, not in the Debian package 
itself.

In the interim, I may just go ahead and push the intrusive multiarch patches 
to the gcc 4.3 base from Ubuntu -- especially since you are once of several 
folks who have built packages that incorprate them (thank you, BTW) -- but 
that really will only buy GHDL a little extra life (maybe 1 Debian release 
cycle at best), and will almost certainly regress the number of supported 
architectures.
--- Begin Message ---
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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