Re: [RFC/commmit] [testsuite/Ada] stop using project files when building test programs

[Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com>]

> > Below is a fairly straightforward change, except maybe for the use
> > of try / finally, which requires TCL version 8.6, released Dec 2012.
> > I think it's a reasonable requirement; any objection?
> 
> I'm still on F20, and that shipped with 8.5 too.  I'll have to upgrade
> eventually, so this may the trigger.
> 
> Note that requiring newer expect/tcl may mean that fewer people will do
> the occasional gcc compile farm testing on some older hosts.  From a quick
> look at some machines there, I see:
> 
>  gcc20 (debian wheezy)'s expect links with 8.5.
>  gcc111 (AIX 7.1)'s expect links with 8.4.
>  gcc110 (F18 POWER7/ppc64)'s expect links with 8.5.

Humpf, that's a fair number of reasons showing that assuming 8.6
may not be reasonable. Bouh...

> How hard would it be to avoid try/finally?  Wouldn't you just have to
> use catch instead?

I don't think it would be very hard. I think catch will work, but
will be a little more convoluted. I'll give it a try...

> Are there other nice 8.6 features that it'd be really nice to
> make use of too?

This is what the 8.6 release notes say:
(https://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/8.6.html)

Highlights of Tcl 8.6

  * Object Oriented Programming
       [prob not very intesting for us, but see URL if interested]

  * Stackless Evaluation:
       The evaluation of many levels of nested proc calls are no longer
       implemented as a stack of nested C routine calls. This revision
       in the internal implementation of Tcl evaluation makes deep
       recursion in Tcl scripts safe to do. But there's more...

       This new implementation enables a collection of new commands,
       coroutine, tailcall, yield, and yieldto that provide profound new
       capabilities and models of concurrency to Tcl scripts.

  * Enhanced Exceptions:
       New commands try and throw and a wealth of new -errorcode values
       enable far more precise trapping and handling of exceptions using
       a familiar construct.

  * Batteries Included:
       Tcl delivers in the pkgs subdirectory a bundled collection of
       third-party packages built and installed along with Tcl.

  * Thread-enabled Operations:
       A thread-enabled default build, a bundled Thread package, and new
       command interp cancel make Tcl 8.6 ready for your multi-threaded
       programming tasks.

  * SQL Database Powered:
       [prob not very intesting for us, but see URL if interested]

  * IPv6 Networking:
       Both client and server sockets support IPv6 where platform
       support exists.

  * Built-in Zlib Compression:
       New command zlib provides utilities to handle compression of data
       and streams.

  * List Processing:
       New commands lmap and dict map enable the elegant expression of
       transformations over Tcl containers.

  * Stacked Channels by Script:
       New commands chan push and chan pop expose the power of stacked
       channels without the need to write C code.

  * Additional New Features:
       Temporary file creation, enhancements to list sorting and
       setting, dict filtering, half-close of bidirectional channels,
       encoding and decoding of binary sequences, finer control over
       load, and many many more.

Maybe some interesting stuff, but I wouldn't want compilation of
Ada code be the trigger that breaks people's testing. Upgrading
tcl/expect is not always a trivial task...

Thanks for the feedback,
-- 
Joel