Hi all!

I would like to propose a new section in the main of Ada-Lang.io. I want to start a conversation and get some feedback from the community before working on this idea. The feedback would need to be positive and the Website admins would have to approve it.

I would like to add a “Projects to work on” (or something similar) at the top navigation bar and mention this section in a couple of places. This section would list some projects and ideas where the community could work on in order to improve the general Ada ecosystem. Notice that I said “Ada Ecosystem” and not “Ada projects”!

For example, it could list projects such as:

• Ada programming
  • Improve whatever thing in Alire
  • Help the IronClad kernel
  • Create some RTS for Zephyr RTOS, *BSD…
  • Create or improve high quality Ada bindings to some C libraries that people could make use of… Think of SDL2, MIDI, etc…
  • Create some highly desired Ada project
• Quality assurance
  • Test Alire v2
  • Test Alire on Windows
  • Test GNAT/LLVM-GNAT on some systems and report bugs or improvements…
  • …
• Integration on other systems
  • Improve Ada support in FreeBSD/NetBSD, etc…
  • Add Ada syntax support in LaTeX-lstlistings (for example, this would require very little Ada experience!)
  • Ada on Macs, Apple systems.
  • Ada and WASM
  • Ada and Android
  • …
• Documentation
  • Write tutorials on topics such as “Getting started with Ada programming in RTEMS…”
  • Give feedback to guides or systems such as the “Learn Ada” website
• Marketing
  • Make posts about Ada projects or news in general programming websites such as HackerNews, general subReddits, etc. (I would ask people to not be obnoxious or just post things for the shake of posting. Posts should be high quality and impactful in order to create momentum!)
  • Response accurately and nicely to comments and questions about Ada in social media
• Help
  • Be present in forums, chats, etc in order to help new people getting started.
  • Compile a list of general Ada pitfalls that should be improved for newbees and general programmers.

This section would not be one where people just list their desires and own personal projects. It would mainly focus on general tools, outreach, easy to get-started projects for new Ada programmers, cool projects that could make Ada grow in the eyes of other programming circles, etc.

So… What do you think? I believe this is a great idea and it allows us, the community, to focus on basic structural issues, create a better “First impression/First experience” when getting started with Ada, and large projects that can be later be used to gain popularity and outreach.

Best regards,
Fer

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Dear all,

this forum post was already written to the C.L.A, but I think it is worthy of being here too, as it may reach even more people. So here goes a summary of what I wrote over at the C.L.A.

What and Why? Ada monthly meetup

I would like to have a monthly meetup to gather the community, see each other, talk about some things and let people present or showcase their work and discuss the news.

When and how?

It would take place once a month and it should last between 45 min to 1 h. This would allow the discussion or showcase of two or three topics and leave room for discussion and smaller news.

The meetup would take place (initially) over Jitsi, a libre conferencing software that does not require installation (it uses modern web browsers for the clients). This would be the initial platform to test the waters and see if it works well for us.

I have selected Saturday 3, June 2023 to be the day we start. It would take place the first weekend of each month with the exception of August (as it is summer in most places, maybe even September) and February, as FOSDEM takes place.

The time would be around 12:00 or 13:00 UTC. That should be a more or less approachable time for most people all over the globe. Though I am aware that it is not great for those in the Americas or in eastern Asia/Australia. It is also meal time in EU, but that is a compromise for everyone. And of course, this is just the first proposal. We will keep improving things as we move along.

How to participate?

You can join just to listen and chat! That is probably what I will end up doing most. However, there are a few things we are looking for:

• Tool developers that would like to showcase its features or new releases.
• Demos of projects.
• Issues within the language or technical problems with tools.
• Cool stuff!
• Questions!

This is a community oriented meetup, not a super heavy technical one, we leave those to the ARG

Feedback

There has already been some feedback over at the C.L.A., but some more would surely help. If you have any questions, issues or recommendations, please, share those!

Best regards,
Fer

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Dear Ada community,

Our proposal for an Ada Developer Room for FOSDEM 2023 has been declined. I asked whether we could have a virtual DevRoom just like in FOSDEM 2022, but it seems unlikely. This means Ada will (most likely) not take part in the new edition of FOSDEM. We are saddened by this decision, but the amount of proposals was indeed very large: 88 DevRoom proposals were submitted!

Nonetheless, we would like to encourage Ada developers to submit presentations to other DevRooms that may fit your interests! You can find the accepted DevRooms in [1]. I think the rooms that could be of interests to the Ada community are “Confidential Computing”, “Embedded, Mobile and Automotive”, “FOSS Educational Programming Languages”, “Microkernel and Component-based OS”, “Open Source Firmware, BMC and Bootloader” and “Security”. However, take a look at all the proposals! Maybe you are writing some RISC-V or networking software in Ada, and there is a DevRoom just for it! Please keep the AdaFOSDEM mailing list [2] informed about submissions and definitely about accepted proposals: we’ll build a consolidated list of Ada-related talks at FOSDEM 2023, as we did before [3]. If you have any questions or issues, we will gladly help you where we can.

We are also happy to announce that Ada-Europe [4], after learning that there would be no Ada DevRoom in FOSDEM, has opened the possibility of adding a new “DevRoom like” track in their 2023 conference [5]. The Ada-Europe conference will take place in Lisbon between the 13 and 16 of June, 2023. If you are interested in this possibility, please, contact Dirk Craeynest <[email protected]> to let him know.

Best regards,
The Ada FOSDEM team

[1] FOSDEM 2023 - Accepted developer rooms
[2] http://listserv.cc.kuleuven.be/archives/adafosdem.html
[3] Ada at the Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM'2021)
[4] http://www.ada-europe.org/
[5] Ada-Europe 2023 - Call for Contributions

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