Ada Resource Association

Now that GNAT GPL 2012 implementing full Ada 2012 is out, reference counted access types use the new aspect Implicit_Dereference, which greatly simplifies the syntax. (The previous Ada 2005 implementation is also availible.)

This package provides a completely safe implementation in that it prevents deallocation by the user; deallocation is under sole control of the implementation. (It’s however not task-safe.)

Full documentation and test programs show how to use the package.

http://www.christ-usch-grein.homepage.t-online.de/Ada/Smart_Pointers.html

A new edition of the Ada 2012 Rationale is available at:

http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/rationale12.html

This edition of the Rationale combines the first three chapters of the Rationale into a single document, fixes a number of errors, adds an index, and adds discussion of various details of Ada 2012 that were changed since the original publication of these chapters in the Ada User Journal. We expect that additional chapters will be added to this edition about every three months.

The Rationale for Ada 2012 provides an overview of new Ada 2012 features, examples of their use, compatibility with Ada 95 and 2005, and more. It was written by John Barnes, and was sponsored in part by the Ada Resource Association. This is an unofficial description of the language; refer to the proposed Ada 2012 standard for detailed language rules.

Randy Brukardt, ARG Editor