How to specify gnat version with action setup-alire@v1

[pjljvandelaar]

On https://github.com/alire-project/setup-alire is written

To use the latest binary release of the Alire project, add this line to your workflow steps:
    - uses: alire-project/setup-alire@v1

However, I have problems with the latest binary release on windows.
Already installing this version breaks my earlier perfectly working code.

I tried adding

[depends-on.'case(os)'.windows]
gnat = "<=11.2.4"

and

[depends-on.'case(os)'.windows]
gnat_native = "<=11.2.4"

to my alire.toml file, but still gnat 12.1.2 (the latest) is installed.
Of course, GNAT_Native 11.2.4 is used to build.

I also read on https://github.com/alire-project/setup-alire

To use a development version compiled from sources (if you known what you are doing), add instead these two steps to you workflow:

    - uses: ada-actions/toolchain@ce2020
    - uses: alire-project/setup-alire@v1
      with:
        branch: "master" # or the branch you want to use

I don't know how the coding of the toolchain works:
what is ce2020 in relation to gnat?
Is there also a ce2021, ce2022?

And, I don't know what I am doing, so my question:

What instructions are needed to set-up alire with at most gnat 11.2.4?

Greetings,
Pierre

[Fabien-Chouteau]

Hi Pierre,

[depends-on.'case(os)'.windows]
gnat = "<=11.2.4"

I don't think it's a good idea to set a special version of GNAT just for windows. You probably want:

[depends-on]
gnat = "<=11.2.4"

to my alire.toml file, but still gnat 12.1.2 (the latest) is installed.

Alire will download a "default" version of GNAT (12.1.2) but then use the one that match your version requirements.

Of course, GNAT_Native 11.2.4 is used to build.

So all is good?

I don't know how the coding of the toolchain works: what is ce2020 in relation to gnat? Is there also a ce2021, ce2022?

This is if you want to use a work-in-progress version of Alire. You need GNAT Community to build Alire itself.
Which we will have to change at some point BTW.

[pjljvandelaar]

I would like to use the latest version of gnat,
but on windows we hit a bug...
So I don't want to but have to restrict the gnat version on windows.

The problem seems to be related to GNATcoll no longer being able to parse a directory that contain gnat12.*
So installing is already problematic even when it is NOT used to build.

[pjljvandelaar]

See AdaCore/libadalang#949 for the bug
in its simplest form and before I found out that libadalang is not to blame but GNATColl seems to be the root cause...