Ada Resource Association

AdaCore has launched a new, free, web-based resource center called AdaCore University at university.adacore.com. The new website offers pre-recorded courses and other learning materials for anyone interested in learning about, or how to program in, the Ada programming language.

The GNAT Pro Ada development environment is now available for the Wind River Linux platform. This new implementation brings the Ada language’s reliability benefits to the increasingly popular Wind River Linux system. AdaCore offers the industry’s leading Ada solution for Wind River’s products, including a GNAT Pro implementation for Wind River’s VxWorks® real-time operating system (RTOS).

AdaCore and its research partners today announced the successful completion of Project Hi-Lite, a three-year, €3.9 million effort aimed at popularizing formal methods in the development of high integrity software by combining formal verification and testing. Hi-Lite took advantage of Airbus’ decade-long experience using formal verification methods to create high integrity systems, and leveraged the powerful industrial tools already developed by the project partners. The work was sponsored by the French Government and the General Council of the Département of Essonne and was conducted by a partnership comprising AdaCore, Altran, Astrium Space Transportation, CEA List, INRIA Toccata and Thales Communications. Hi-Lite’s main goal was to make formal verification faster and easier to use across large, multi-language projects that need to meet safety certification criteria, and the project has successfully achieved this objective. “Hi-Lite has allowed us to take advanced program proving technology that was developed in academia and adapt it for industrial use,” said Yannick Moy, Hi-Lite Project Manager at AdaCore. “The project has shown that formal verification can complement testing and play a prominent and practical role in verifying critical software.”

CodePeer is an advanced static analysis tool helps developers detect potential run-time and logic errors in Ada programs. CodePeer 2.2 brings users an extra level of flexibility through interfaces to Eclipse, spreadsheets, full HTML capabilities, as well as solutions for the full range of Ada projects, including those with requirements for the highest levels of integrity and certification, and systems with large and complex code bases.

GNAT Pro 7.1 is a major new version of the company’s flagship development environment that brings a combination of advantages: extreme stability for existing users, support for an increasingly wider range of platforms and targets, significant performance enhancements, and a wealth of new capabilities and features. The most striking new feature, support for automatic data endianness conversion, is already a customer favorite.

TOYOTA InfoTechnology Center Japan has selected the SPARK language and SPARK Pro toolset for a high-reliability software research project. The goal of the project is to show that software requirements can be transformed into an implementation that can be proven to be free of run-time errors. This will have the key advantage of providing ultra-low-defect software for higher reliability in a vehicle component.

Atego™, launches a new version of Atego ApexAda™ Developer Enterprise Edition with Ada 2005 support. Atego ApexAda Developer 5.0 is a major new release with complete support for the language features in Ada 2005. It passes all available Ada Conformity Assessment Test Suite (ACATS) tests applicable for native code compilation and execution. The Atego ApexAda Developer product provides a complete solution for editing, compiling, debugging, testing, managing, and executing even the most complex and challenging Ada applications on UNIX and Linux-based operating systems.

AdaCore today announced the availability of its GNAT Pro Safety-Critical product for ARM Cortex micro-controllers. This bareboard GNAT Pro Safety-Critical product provides a complete Ada development environment, oriented towards systems that are safety-critical or have stringent memory constraints. Developers of such systems can now exploit the software engineering benefits of the Ada language, including reliability, maintainability, and portability.

Calling all fellow software engineers (Ada geeks)! On this Valentine’s Day, AdaCore invites you to open your hearts and help share the passion for all things Ada! As so many developers know, relationships with programming languages can be a lot like romances: First there are wild infatuations and brief honeymoons filled with eager expectations. Then come realities, incompatibilities, even loveless cohabitation. So, what’s next? A remorseful search for a new relationship, or reconciliation and renewed passion? Thanks to the new ISO-approved Ada 2012 standard, our ardor for Ada is now stronger than ever! Come join the conversation: Let us know why and how you use Ada, and what you love about it. Visit www.ada2012.org/passion.html and share your own ‘passion’ for Ada! Also, check us out on facebook at facebook.com/adapassion.

Language revision adds contract-based programming, multicore support, and other advanced features

GENEVA, Switzerland, December 18, 2012 – The Ada Resource Association (ARA) and Ada-Europe today announced the approval and publication of the latest version of the Ada programming language by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The language revision, known as Ada 2012, was under the auspices of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9 and was conducted by the Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG) subunit of WG9, with sponsorship in part from the ARA and Ada-Europe. The formal approval of the standard was issued on November 20 by ISO/IEC JTC 1, and the standard was published on December 15.

Read the full release.