Ada Resource Association

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.