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Home > GNAT Pro > Features and Benefits

Like Ada, the GNAT Pro package was designed with quality in mind. Whether you’re doing native, embedded or safety-critical development, this well-crafted combination of tools and services allows your team to take full advantage of the benefits that Ada offers, and helps ensure a smooth, cost-effective development process. GNAT Pro is the first Ada development environment to support all three ISO standards of the Ada programming language (Ada 83, Ada 95, and Ada 2005).

Programming in the Large

GNAT Pro is designed for systems comprising many thousands of modules, and millions of lines of code. Its robust system architecture scales based on program size and does not degrade abruptly when a fixed capacity is reached. Its Project Manager facility offers users a flexible framework for organizing large multi-person development efforts.

Multi-language development

Thanks to the open standards used by GCC, GNAT Pro eases the job of developing applications comprising Ada and other languages such as C, Fortran, and C++. The Ada interfacing facilities are fully implemented, including capabilities that inspired several new features included in the upcoming Ada 2005 standard.

Excellent code quality

Efficient object code is achieved through a combination of Ada-specific and GCC back-end optimizations; a supplemental tool reduces code size by removing unused subprograms from an executable. The run-time libraries have been tuned to provide high performance, with a special focus on exception handling and tasking.

Ease of transitioning from other Ada systems

GNAT Pro implements several attributes and pragmas that ease the migration of existing Ada 83 or Ada 95 code bases to GNAT, and the Project Manager facility allows you to adopt the same file naming conventions and directory structure as were used in the previous system.

Support for safety-critical applications

The GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition implements several language profiles (including the Ravenscar tasking subset) whose run-time support libraries are amenable to safety certification. It also provides a number of compiler options that are especially relevant; for example, source to object traceability, control over elaboration order, and detection of constructs that would generate implicit loops or conditionals.

Rapid and expert support

Dependable support is intrinsic to GNAT Pro and is supplied by the product developers themselves. Questions on all aspects of Ada and GNAT Pro are answered promptly, comprehensively, and accurately. If you encounter a blocking issue, this receives immediate attention; if appropriate, a wavefront release with the relevant repair can be provided.

Source code inclusion

All of the tools are supplied in both executable and source code versions. This open-source approach is especially useful for the run-time libraries, since it allows you to understand important implementation decisions for capabilities such as tasking and memory management.

Your rights to use or adapt GNAT Pro components

You have complete freedom to include in your product any of the GNAT libraries or run-time components, as is or with your changes. You can do this without any obligation to expose or distribute your source code. Thus you can use GNAT Pro to develop proprietary or otherwise restricted software products.

Full Ada 2005 Implementation

In keeping with its status as the leading Ada technology, GNAT Pro is the first Ada environment to implement all of the major features included in Ada 2005, the latest revision of the Ada language. With Ada 2005, Ada continues to be on the cutting edge of programming language design. Some of the new features include:

• - Mutually Dependent Package Specifications
• - Aggregates for Limited Types
• - More Contexts for Anonymous Access Types
• - Java-like Interfaces
• - Real-Time and High-Integrity Support
• - New Pragmas
• - Predefined Library extensions