Ada Resource Association

The Muen Kernel enforces a strict and robust isolation of components to shield security-critical functions from vulnerable software running on the same physical system. To achieve the necessary level of trustworthiness, the Muen team used the SPARK language and toolset to formally prove the absence of run-time errors. The most recent version of the Kernel upgrades the software to use the SPARK 2014 language, which allows the team to use more of the Ada language and provide the annotations in a more readable form.

AdaCore has launched a blog to provide an insight into the AdaCore ecosystem. The blog will cover both technical and less-technical topics (such as the business of Open Source software). The blog can be found at blog.adacore.com.

AdaCore today announced the preview release of GNATdashboard, a new tool that serves as a control panel for monitoring and improving the quality of Ada software. GNATdashboard feeds code quality information from AdaCore’s tools to the open source SonarQube code quality management platform and Squoring Technologies’ SQUORE quality and performance decision support solution.

“For the first time, a tool focused on software quality assessment and management is available for Ada developers. It’s designed to help users understand their technical debt – which is essentially the price one pays for choices such as design decisions that make it difficult to implement changes later.”

AdaCore’s GNAT Pro cross-development environment has been selected by the Polytechnic University of Madrid (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid / UPM), for the UPMSat-2 UNION satellite project’s real-time on-board and ground control software. The 50kg micro-satellite, scheduled to be launched in Q4 2015, will provide a technology demonstration platform for the university from a sun-synchronous orbit nearly 600 km above Earth.

AdaCore’s CodePeer advanced static analysis tool for the automated review and validation of Ada source code has been qualified as a software verification tool for developers in both avionics and railway industries.

AdaCore has released a freely downloadable version of its GNAT GPL Ada cross-development environment for Bare Board ARM Cortex processors. Developers of non-proprietary software can now exploit Ada 2012’s reliability, safety and security benefits for ARM applications.

GNAT GPL for Bare Board ARM Cortex processors provides a complete Ada 2012 development environment, including a comprehensive tool-chain and GPS, AdaCore’s flagship Integrated Development Environment (IDE). It also includes a fully configurable/customizable run-time library consisting of the “Small Footprint” (SFP) and Ravenscar profiles that are particularly relevant to safety-critical systems. The SFP profile corresponds to a language subset with minimal GNAT run-time routines, and the Ravenscar profile is a subset of the Ada concurrency features with an efficient, predictable, small-footprint implementation. The resulting Ada subset has expressive power well beyond that of other languages used for ARM-based devices.

Members of the SPARK team from Altran UK will be attending the Ada-Europe 2014 conference to exhibit, present information about the SPARK technology, and provide a full-day tutorial about the SPARK language. They will be featuring the recently released next generation of the SPARK toolset which includes support for the latest version of the language, SPARK 2014.

On Friday 27th June, Altran UK will be presenting one of the tutorial sessions in collaboration with our partners, AdaCore: Introduction to Verification with SPARK 2014. This tutorial will provide a broad overview of the SPARK 2014 language as well as an introduction to one of the most novel features of the language – the dual nature of the contracts as both executable and mathematical statements and how these can be verified by testing, proof, or a combination of the two. In the afternoon, the tutorial will look at the more advanced features of the language and toolset that are essential for industrial-scale specification. The tutorial will include hands-on exercises using the SPARK toolset.

Australian healthcare informatics company SmartWard Pty Ltd has adopted AdaCore’s GNAT Pro Ada Development Environment and CodePeer static analysis tool to implement their patient care management system. This system needs to be highly reliable and secure from unauthorized users while providing real-time response in an easy to use format. AdaCore’s tools were determined to be the best solution for meeting these requirements.

AdaCore has a long history of providing Ada-based software development tools for a wide range of safety-critical systems, and now provides a competitive advantage for medical applications such as SmartWard where the concept of a ‘fatal error’ may be literally true.

AdaCore today announced the release of its latest Ada cross-development environment, GNAT Pro 7.2, for ARM Cortex processors running Android. This GNAT Pro product, hosted on Windows and Linux, comprises a complete Ada toolsuite for developing and maintaining Android applications using a mixture of Ada and Java. Developers can now exploit the software engineering benefits of the Ada language, while also taking advantage of the Java libraries and services provided by the Android platform. Applications can also be written solely in Ada, or in a combination of Ada and other “native” languages. Android 2.3 and later versions are supported, on Cortex A8 and above.

AdaCore today announced a new target platform for the latest version of its GNAT Pro Safety-Critical Ada Development Environment. Hosted on Windows workstations, GNAT Pro Safety-Critical V7.2 is now targeted to the LynuxWorks LynxOS-178 V2.2.2 RTOS for PowerPC, and supports both ARINC-653 APEX partitions and POSIX pthreads. GNAT Pro Safety-Critical includes the standard GNAT Pro components – the GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) and GNATbench IDEs and accompanying toolset – along with specialized tools and run-time libraries oriented towards applications that have to meet demanding software safety standards, such as DO-178B or DO-178C for avionics. With GNAT Pro Safety-Critical for LynxOS-178, developers who need to deliver high-assurance applications on this LynuxWorks RTOS now have an integrated and full-functioned toolsuite that implements all versions of the Ada language, including Ada 2012, and is backed by AdaCore’s expert support.