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2nd Call for Participation
A d a - B e l g i u m S p r i n g 2 0 0 8 E v e n t
Sunday, May 18, 2008, 12:00-19:00
Leuven, Belgium
including at 14:00
2008 Ada-Belgium General Assembly
and at 15:00
Workshop on Creating Debian Packages of Ada Software
§<§
http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~dirk/ada-belgium/events/local.html>
*** REGISTRATION DEADLINE 13 MAY ***
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Announcement
------------
The next Ada-Belgium event will take place on Sunday, May 18, 2008 in
Leuven.
The Ada-Belgium Board decided to propose a more interactive and social
format than our traditional evening events based on a General Assembly
followed by a technical presentation. Therefore, this event starts at
noon, runs until 7pm, and includes a barbecue, a key signing party, the
15th General Assembly of the organization, and a workshop on packaging
Ada software for Debian hosted by Ludovic Brenta, principal maintainer
of Ada in Debian.
Schedule
--------
* 12:00 welcome and getting started (setting up computers and
preparing food - please be there!)
* 13:00 barbecue
* 14:00 Ada-Belgium General Assembly
* 14:45 key signing party
* 15:00 workshop on creating Debian packages of Ada software
* 19:00 end
Participation
-------------
Everyone interested (members and non-members alike) is welcome at any
or all parts of this event.
For practical reasons registration is required. If you would like to
attend, please send an email before Tuesday, May 13, to Dirk Craeynest
<****@*****.***> with the subject "Ada-Belgium Spring
2008 Event", so you can get precise directions to the place of the
meeting.
If you are a member but have not renewed your affiliation yet, please
do so by paying the appropriate fee before the General Assembly (you
have also received a printed request via normal mail). If you are
interested to become a new member, please register by filling out the
2008 membership application form[1] and by paying the appropriate fee
before the General Assembly.
After payment you will receive a receipt from our treasurer and you
are considered a member of the organization for the year 2008 with all
member benefits[2]. Early renewal ensures you receive the full
Ada-Belgium membership benefits (including the Ada-Europe indirect
membership benefits package).
As mentioned at earlier occasions, we have a limited stock of
documentation sets and Ada related CD-ROMs that were distributed at
previous events. Most important are back issues of the Ada User
Journal[3]. These will be available on a first-come first-serve basis
at the General Assembly for current and new members.
[1]
http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~dirk/ada-belgium/forms/member-form08.html
[2]
http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~dirk/ada-belgium/member-benefit.html
[3]
http://www.ada-europe.org/journal.html
Barbecue
--------
The organization will provide food and beverage to all Ada-Belgium
members. Non-members who want to participate at the barbecue are also
welcome: they can choose to join the organization or pay the ludicrous
sum of TEN EUROS per person to the Treasurer of the organization.
General Assembly
----------------
All Ada-Belgium members have a vote at the General Assembly, can add
items to the agenda, and can be a candidate for a position on the
Board[4]. See the separate official convocation[5] for all details.
[4]
http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~dirk/ada-belgium/board/
[5]
http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~dirk/ada-belgium/events/08/080518-abga-conv.html
Key Signing Party
-----------------
Wouldn't it be nice if a majority of people used GPG to sign their
email every day so that you could send all non-signed email into the
spam bin? To make that dream come true, please join and expand the
global Web of Trust! [6]
What you should bring with you:
* an official ID card issued by your national government;
* your GPG key fingerprint (i.e. the output of gpg --fingerprint) on
small paper slips; a dozen copies or so should be enough.
What you will go home with:
* signatures from all other participants;
* automatic inclusion in the global Web of Trust;
* the ability to digitally sign or encrypt anything you like.
[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_Trust
Workshop: Packaging Ada Software for Debian
-------------------------------------------
Debian[7], "The Universal Operating System", is simply the best
platform for the enthusiast Ada developer. The features that
distinguish Debian from the rest are:
* a binary distribution that avoids the need to recompile Florist,
ASIS, GtkAda and all other Ada packages;
* a large number of packages intended for Ada developers;
* a clear and consistent policy[8] making all packages integrate
seamlessly and interoperate;
* outstanding support for the Ada part of the GNU Compiler
Collection (GCC) with unique innovations like libgnatvsn and
libgnatprj not found anywhere else;
* backports of bug fixes from the bleeding edge of GCC development
into the safe and stable compiler used for all Debian packages;
* support for more hardware architectures than any other Ada
distribution: alpha, amd64, hppa, i386, ia64, kfreebsd-i386,
powerpc, s3980 and sparc (with mips, mipsel and ppc64 added
recently).
* a choice between "stable", "testing" and "unstable" versions of
Debian to suit personal preferences;
* Debian is the mother of Ubuntu, Knoppix and dozens of other
distributions which sometimes incorporate the Ada packages.
The goal of the workshop is to help people participate in this effort
to bring even more Ada software to Debian, or to help maintain the
existing packages.
What you should bring with you:
* your computer, already installed with Debian unstable or with an
unstable chroot already created (see below);
* network cables (or WiFi already configured);
* monitor and keyboard, if your computer is not a laptop;
* power cables;
* some Ada software you would like to see in Debian but is not there
(not necessarily software that you wrote; any software with a
license permitting redistribution in source and binary form will
do).
Note 1: if your computer does not run Debian as its main operating
system, you can install Debian in a virtual machine (VMWare or other),
in a jail on a FreeBSD system (Debian kfreebsd-i386), or in a chroot
on any other distribution. Danny Beullens will offer help and
assistance to those who would like to install Debian in a VMWare
virtual machine.
Note 2: if you would like to install Debian as your main operating
system but are uncomfortable doing so by yourself, please get in touch
with your nearest Linux User Group (e.g.
http://www.bxlug.be in
Brussels).
What Ludovic Brenta will do for you:
* set up a local Debian mirror, so you can install or upgrade
packages necessary for Ada package development;
* explain how to package Ada software for Debian;
* help you package your own program or library;
* answer questions about GNAT, GCC, Debian, etc.;
* if your package is suitable for inclusion in Debian, sponsor it
for you.
What you will go home with:
* your own .deb packages installed on your computer;
* better understanding of how packaging works;
* better understanding of the Debian Policy for Ada;
* if your package is suitable, your name on the Debian Package
Tracking System and your package on the next Debian DVD or CDROM
distribution.
[7]
http://www.debian.org
[8]
http://www.ada-france.org/debian/debian-ada-policy.html
Directions
----------
To permit this more interactive and social format, the event takes
place at private premises in Leuven. As instructed above, please
inform us by e-mail if you would like to attend, and we'll provide you
precise directions to the place of the meeting. Obviously, the number
of participants we can accommodate is not unlimited, so don't delay...
Looking forward to meet many of you in Leuven!
Dirk Craeynest
President Ada-Belgium
****@*****.***
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank our sponsors for their continued support of our
activities: AdaCore, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven),
Offis nv/sa - Aubay Group, and Université Libre de Bruxelles (U.L.B.).
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