[adasockets] adasockets / GNAT.Sockets

[Samuel Tardieu]

Thomas> Which is the advantage of adasockets compared to GNAT.Sockets
Thomas> ?

Sam> I prefer its interface, which is of a higher level than
Sam> GNAT.Sockets one.

Thomas> Could you give me some examples, please ?

Thomas> Looking at PingPong example (in GNAT.Sockets), i don't see
Thomas> anything else than Initialize and Finalize, Is it enough to
Thomas> say that it is higher level ?

This is a fair question. When AdaSockets was written, there was no
GNAT.Sockets. Now that GNAT.Sockets has evolved, the useless of
AdaSockets has been diminished.

Note that I started a branch to rebase AdaSockets on GNAT.Sockets so
that we can benefit from its ability to be cross-compiled (constants
packages are generated for many platforms and distributed):

  http://www.rfc1149.net/git/?p=adasockets.git;a=shortlog;h=gnat-sockets

However, there is a long way to be entirely GNAT.Sockets based while
keeping the same interface. I think I may do a last major release on
the 1.x branch (probably 1.9) which will be the same as 1.8.x (same
interface) + cross-compilation capabilities. This branch will then be
maintained but only accumulate bug fixes if needed. I will also
maintain the 1.8.x branch with no dependency over GNAT.Sockets if
there is a need for that.

I'll then see if there is a point in making a AdaSockets 2.x. In this
case, the interface would change a little, and AdaSockets would be a
package which enhances GNAT.Sockets with more high-level services.

But as I have been doing for several years for all my free software
projects, I will only write code for services that *I* need. If people
need some other services, they will have to write them. Of course, I
will provide assistance and be happy to integrate them in the
AdaSockets distribution if they are well written, if they have a
compatible licence, and if the author wants me to do so.

What do you think about this plan?

  Sam

PS/ If you wish to test the refactoring branch, you can either use GIT
    or grab a snapshot from the URL given above. You will need to have
    a recent autoconf and automake installed, and to run "autoreconf -i"
    in the top-level directory to add the auto-generated files such as
    "configure". I'd be happy to receive success or failure reports
    with details on your platform.
-- 
Samuel Tardieu -- sam at rfc1149.net -- http://www.rfc1149.net/