AdaCore Upgrades GNATbench for Wind River Workbench

New platforms and features benefit Ada developers on Wind River Workbench

NEW YORK and PARIS, September 21, 2010 – Embedded Systems Conference Boston NEW YORK and PARIS – Embedded Systems Conference Boston

AdaCore, a leading supplier of Ada development tools and support services, today announced a major update to GNATbench, the Ada plug-in that brings the advantages of AdaCore’s GNAT Pro toolset to Wind River’s Workbench integrated development environment for embedded systems running VxWorks. The latest version of GNATbench, 2.4.1, is now available as part of the recent GNAT Pro 6.3.2 release, and is supported on Wind River Workbench 3.1 / 3.2, hosted on Windows, Linux, and Solaris.

“AdaCore is one of Wind River's strategic partners, and our business relationship goes back many years,” said Robert Dewar, AdaCore President and CEO. “Maintaining this relationship is an ongoing process, it involves making critical contributions to our joint technology and enhancing our products to meet customers’ growing needs. Our new version of GNATbench meets both these goals.”

“We’ve introduced support for significant new Wind River platforms as well as for a new version of an existing major platform,” said Dr. Patrick Rogers, GNATbench Project Lead. “These platforms address the application domains within which Ada is most advantageous. We've also enhanced our integration with the Wind River project builder and replaced the underlying Ada compilation engine.”

GNATbench 2.4.1 now supports three new Wind River platforms: VxWorks 653, version 2.3; VxWorks Cert, version 6.6.2; and VxWorks MILS, version 2.1. In addition, GNATbench now supports VxWorks 6.8 (General Purpose Platform 3.8) and Workbench 3.2. Tutorials for these new platforms are now provided, as well as new tutorials for building shared libraries.

GNATbench now uses the Wind River default "flexible" managed build type for all new projects. This build type allows only those directories actually containing code to be processed during a build, which is therefore simpler and more efficient. The deprecated "standard" managed builds are still supported for existing GNATbench projects, and a project conversion wizard provides the option to convert them to use the new build type.

This new version of GNATbench uses GPRbuild, the AdaCore multi-language builder, when building the Ada portion of a Workbench project. As such, it can also compile code written in other languages, if required. Equally important, GPRbuild is the current and future AdaCore builder technology, replacing the older gnatmake toolset.

“Wind River adds new features and functionality to each new version of Workbench based on customer demand,” said Chip Downing, Director of Aerospace and Defense at Wind River. “With AdaCore's continued enhancements to GNATbench, the Workbench/GNATbench combination provides a very powerful Eclipse-based development environment.”

New GNATbench 2.4.1 features include:

  • New Wind River platforms
  • Wind River VxWorks 653 Platform, version 2.3
  • Wind River VxWorks DO-178B Platform, version 6.6
  • Wind River VxWorks MILS Platform, version 2.0.1
  • New version of Wind River General Purpose Platform
  • Workbench 3.2
  • VxWorks 6.8
  • "Flexible" managed builds for all new projects
  • Project conversion wizard
  • GPRbuild, the GNAT multi-language builder
  • New tutorials
  • VxWorks 653
  • VxWorks DO-178B
  • VxWorks MILS
  • Shared libraries

About GNATbench
GNATbench for Wind River Workbench brings the advantages of AdaCore’s GNAT Pro toolset to Wind River’s Workbench integrated development environment for embedded systems running VxWorks. GNATbench for Wind River Workbench is fully integrated with the existing Workbench tools, combining the power of AdaCore’s development and compilation technology with the extensive Workbench tools for VxWorks systems creation.

AdaCore has also developed a stand-alone version of GNATbench for Eclipse. This separate plug-in has all the editing and browsing features of the Workbench version, including the Outline View. The difference is primarily the intended execution target: the builder produces executables for native systems, rather than embedded processors, and likewise the debugger supports native system debugging.

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a state-of-the-art programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where safety, security, and reliability are critical. AdaCore's flagship product is the GNAT Pro development environment, which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base; see http://www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro continue to see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railroad systems, and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains such as financial services.

AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com

Press Contacts
press@adacore.com