DH_ADA_LIBRARY(1)

NAME
dh_ada_library - help packaging Ada libraries for Debian

SYNOPSIS
dh_ada_library [debhelper options] [[variable=value ...] project.gpr] ...

DESCRIPTION
dh_ada_library is a debhelper program that handles some common tasks in packaging libraries written in the Ada programming language.

Each project.gpr argument designates a GNAT project file building a shared library provided by the source package. Since using environment variables in such projects is common practice, a list of variable assignments may be provided before each project.

dh_ada_library reads each project file and extracts the following information from it: library name, imported projects, source directories, ALI files directory and linker options. Then it parses debian/control to check that three package names exist conforming to the Coexistence Not Allowed naming scheme described in the Debian Policy for Ada and extracts the ALI files version (aliversion)) and the shared library version (soversion). Then, dh_ada_library processes each of the three packages as follows:

  Runtime library package
dh_ada_library installs the shared library into the package then runs dh_strip with options storing its debugging information into the -dbg package.

If the shared library declares its stack executable, dh_ada_library generates a lintian override for the runtime library package about GNAT using trampolines for exception handling. dh_lintian is run first so that it will not overwrite the override file later.

  Debugging symbols (-dbg) package
The ada:Depends, ada:Recommends, ada:Suggests substitution variables receive values reflecting that the -dbg package depends on the library package, recommends the -dev package and suggests the gnat package.

Versions <= 5.3 used to replace the documentation directory with a symbolic link to the one in the runtime library package, but usage has shown that linking directories caused upgrade problems. If a binary package built with such a version has been released, the source package should add maintainer scripts as described in https://wiki.debian.org/MissingCopyrightFile.

  Development package (-dev)
First, dh_ada_library installs the usual development symbolic link (*.so -> *.so.soversion), ALI files and sources into the -dev package. Languages other than Ada listed in the project file are taken into account, whether they have been previously dealt with by gprbuild, or ignored by gnatmake and compiled separately. Then it looks for a file named libLIBRARY_NAME.a (the static library) in the current directory or its subdirectories and installs this file into the -dev package.

A second project file, intended for use by programs linking against the library, is generated and installed into the -dev package. The Linker package of the new project inherits any -l or -L linker options from Leading_Library_Options and Library_Options attributes of the build project file.

Each renaming exception is transmitted to the generated project.

dh_ada_library runs dh_strip before installing the static library so that the latter keeps its debugging information.

The ada:Depends substitution variable receives a value reflecting that the package depends on gnat, gnat-X.Y and the library package. For each imported library project recognized, either as already processed or installed on the build system by dpkg-query, a dependency is added into ada:Depends and the generated project is added the corresponding with line. In the case of an already processed project within the same source package, the dependency mandates an exact binary:Version, ensuring that all static libraries are compiled with compatible options.

REMARKS
This program does not belong to the debhelper suite. To activate it, please run the dh sequencer with the --with ada-library option.

The Library_Version project attribute is purposedly ignored. Instead, the soname is guessed from the library package name. For projects needing an external variable definition to set this attribute, any arbitrary value may be given. This will often allow the maintainer to use a simple debian/ada_libraries file instead of a debhelper override or an environment variable exportation.

Both libraries and ALI files are installed into /usr/lib/DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH, the project and sources into /usr/share/ada/adainclude. This implies that the -dev package cannot be declared Multi-Arch: same as the content of the project (and maybe of generated sources) will vary across architectures.

FILES

debian/ada_libraries
    Projects and variables, in addition to those in the command line if called directly from debian/rules. Line breaks are considered as normal spaces. This may change in the future and it is recommended to put exactly one affectation or project on each line. Any line starting with a dash will be ignored.

OPTIONS
Common debhelper command line options and environment variables are recognized.

EXAMPLES
dh_ada_library 'DIRS=src gen SOVERSION=ignored foo.gpr --verbose --no-act

SEE ALSO
debhelper(7), dh_installdocs(1), dh_lintian(1), dh_strip(1), deb-substvars(5), the Debian Policy for Ada available at http://people.debian.org/~lbrenta/debian-ada-policy.html.

AUTHOR
dh_ada_library and this manpage were written by Nicolas Boulenguez <nicolas@debian.org> for the Debian project (and may be used by others).