AdaCore Latest Updates

Nebenläufige Programmierung in Ada

2013-05-17T09:50:39+00:00

heise Developer | Nebenläufige Programmierung in Ada | May 17, 2013

Improved indentation of conditional expressions

2013-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

Ada 2012 If-expressions and case-expressions are better handled by the indentation engine and in particular extra indentation levels are used for each case branch.

WB: Debug tooltip

2013-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

When debugging an ada application, if the mouse cursor is over a variable that can be printed by the debugger, the tooltip displays the variable current value. This feature requires WRWB 3.3 or later.

Macros in configuration file

2013-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

A macro expansion system is now provided for PolyORB runtime configuration parameters, when PolyORB is compiled with GNATCOLL.

DASIA 2013

2013-05-14T11:08:36+00:00

May 14-16, 2013 – Portugal

Johannes Kanig and David Lesens (Astrium Space Transportation) are presenting, "Formal Validation of Aerospace Software".

Real-Time Operating Systems

2013-05-13T09:52:28+00:00

Avionics Today | Real-Time Operating Systems | May 13, 2013

GB: warning editing files not part of a GB project

2013-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

When the Ada editor opens a file not part of a GNATbench project, a dialog is displayed to inform the user that some features will not work properly until the file is part of a GNATbench project. This dialog can be disabled through Ada Editor Preferences page.

Use host name instead of IP address in CORBA IORs

2013-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

IIOP listening endpoint addresses can now be specified to be published by host name (rather than by IP address) in IORs.

More accurate warnings for generic bodies

2013-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

Warnings on generic bodies (e.g. for suspicious unchecked conversions) are now properly controlled by the setting of warning flags at the point of instantiation (rather than the settings in effect when the instance bodies are analyzed. This allows finer control over warnings from generic bodies.

To_Address attribute can handle high addresses

2013-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

Previously, if the argument of To_Address was given as a literal or other untyped static expression, the argument of To_Address could be no greater than 2**63-1 even on 64-bit machines where addresses up to 2**64-1 make sense. This attribute now handles static address values up to 2**m-1, where m is the memory size (typically 32 or 64).

Better messages for Ada 2012 feature not allowed

2013-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

When an Ada 2012 feature is used, and some other Ada mode is active, then the error message (which used to always advise using the -gnat2012 switch) will now point to the relevant pragma if the incompatible mode was set by the use of a pragma.

GNAT tools recognize—help and—version switches

2013-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

All gnat utilities (gnatkr, gnatls, gnatpp, etc) now recognize the --help switch (to output usage information), and --version (to output version and copyright information).

Warn on ineffective use of -gnateE

2013-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

Some run times (those that do not support full exception semantics) are unable to implement the extra exception information option set by the use of the -gnateE switch. A warning is now issued if -gnateE is used on such a configuration.

Gem #147 : Su(per)btypes in Ada 2012 - Part 2

2013-05-06T13:00:40+00:00

In the previous Gem in this series, we saw how the aspect Static_Predicate can be used to state properties of scalar objects that should be respected at all times. This Gem is concerned with the Dynamic_Predicate aspect.

Switches -gnatc and -gnatR cannot be used together

2013-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

Output of representation information (-gnatR) requires code to be generated, so this switch is incompatible with the use of -gnatc. This prohibition is now documented in the users guide and checked by the compiler.

Add For_Each and Sort_Table to GNAT.Table

2013-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

Procedures For_Each and Sort_Table have been added to GNAT.Table to make the interface closer to that of GNAT.Dynamic_Tables.

Switch -gnatRm to dump convention/mechanisms

2013-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

The switch -gnatRm (/REPRESENTATION_INFO=MECHANISMS in VMS) causes the convention and parameter passing mechanisms to be listed for all subprograms. Note: this is actually not a new feature, it was added some time ago, but never got documented until now, so that is why it appears in this version of the features file.

Testing or Formal Verification: DO-178C Alternatives and Industrial Experience

2013-05-03T09:30:13+00:00

IEEE Software | Testing or Formal Verification: DO-178C Alternatives and Industrial Experience | May 3, 2013

Testing or Formal Verification: DO-178C Alternatives and Industrial Experience

2013-05-03T09:11:11+00:00

Testing or Formal Verification: DO-178C Alternatives and Industrial Experience looks at how to use formal verification instead of testing of software in civilian airplanes (for which DO-178C applies). It is based on the experience of Airbus and Dassault-Aviation in the application of formal verification with the Frama-C platform. In particular it describes:

What the avionics certification standard DO-178C asks in replacement for test coverage, which does not apply when one uses formal verification instead of testing.
How formal verification tools can help with these alternate objectives.
The solutions that Airbus and Dassault-Aviation have implemented to cover these objectives.

This paper is copyrighted by IEEE, and reproduced here with their permission. You can also access it on the IEEE Software website.

Ada Basics Training Course in Paris Offices

2013-04-30T13:26:26+00:00

AdaCore is organizing a public training from June 17th to June 21st, on Ada basics. This training targets people that have programming knowledge in languages such as Java, C or C++, but with little or no Ada knowledge. It is particularly appropriate for programmers that have just joined an Ada project, or are planning to in the next 12 months.

This training combines theory and practice. The practical exercises are carried out on a GNAT Pro installation. The following topics will be studied:

Programming structures (declarations, types, instructions, arrays, record, exceptions)
Software architecture (subprograms, packages, encapsulation, access types, inheritance, limited types, genericity)
Ada 2012 Overview of advanced concepts (object orientation, low level programming, concurrency)

Please contact info@adacore.com for additional information.

CodePeer 2.2

2013-04-30T10:29:32+00:00

CodePeer 2.2 introduces many improvements, driven by customer feedback, including:
• Integration into GNATbench, the GNAT Pro Ada plug-in for Eclipse and Wind River Systems Workbench
• Full support for GNAT project files
• Message review from HTML reports
• New “–level” switch to easily tune CodePeer messages and analysis time for any kind of code base
• More accurate analysis of math functions and floating point computations
• Export of messages to spreadsheets

A pre-recorded demo presented by Quentin Ochem introducing the latest CodePeer 2.2 features is currently available online.

Please visit: http://www.adacore.com/knowledge/demos/codepeer-2-2

New attribute Restriction_Set

2013-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

This attribute allows compile testing of whether a restriction is set. The allowed restrictions that can be tested are No_Dependence, and all boolean (no parameter) restrictions for which the binder enforces consistency. This is primarily intended for specialization of library code, but can be used in applications programs as well.

Ada Conference UK 2013

2013-04-25T09:46:46+00:00

Apr 25, 2013 – Birmingham, UK

AdaCore is lead sponsor of this event. Tucker Taft is presenting an Ada 2012 tutorial and Robert Dewar will give a talk entitled "I'm as Mad as Hell, and I'm Not Going To Take This Anymore!".

Improved error message for illegal trigger

2013-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

The error message for an illegal triggering statement in an asynchronous transfer of control now has an RM reference to clarify the legality rule.

Design West

2013-04-23T09:39:09+00:00

Apr 23-25, 2013 – San Jose CA, USA

AdaCore is exhibiting at this conference (booth #719). Tucker Taft will present the paper, "Systems Programming in the Distributed, Multicore World with Go, Rust, and ParaSail" and Ben Brosgol will give a talk entitled "Object-Oriented Programming for High-Integrity Systems: Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them".

TOYOTA ITC Japan Selects SPARK Pro Language and Toolset for High-Reliability Research Project

2013-04-23T07:02:57+00:00

SAN JOSE, Calif., NEW YORK and PARIS, April 23, 2013 – Design West Conference – AdaCore and Altran today announced TOYOTA InfoTechnology Center (ITC) Japan’s selection of 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. An added benefit is the reduction of development and maintenance effort, since the formal approach being used can give mathematical assurance to a variety of correctness properties, reducing the need for certain types of testing and eliminating the need for post-deployment corrections.

The research project is taking a proven design and generating a fully assured code implementation, starting from a single vehicle system component. The aim is to use SPARK Pro technology to prove that the software can be produced free of run-time exceptions under all operating conditions, as a first step to composing larger ultra-low-defect systems. Alternative approaches using conventional software development methods have fundamental limitations. Testing can only provide evidence for a limited set of conditions, and static analysis performed on existing code to check for vulnerabilities, or other errors, does not address the underlying problem of preventing the errors in the first place. Using the SPARK language, toolset and methods solves this basic issue and will provide a clear competitive advantage for this component.

About SPARK
SPARK is a programming language that supports the precise specification of design or requirements in source code using a notation for formal contracts, including pre-conditions and post-conditions for subprograms, and inter-module information flow dependencies. The SPARK Pro toolset can then be used to verify that the software correctly implements the design, or meets its requirements, by verifying that the source code logic complies with the specified contracts.

SPARK can be used both to precisely express system requirements and to define an executable implementation, which can be formally shown to meet those requirements. Correctness can thus be demonstrated from the start, and maintained incrementally as the system evolves. This is a vastly different approach, and much more reliable, than developing a system and then using tests or static analysis to reduce the number of errors introduced in earlier life-cycle phases.

About SPARK Pro
SPARK Pro, a product jointly developed by Altran and AdaCore, provides a state-of-the-art language and toolset for engineering high-assurance software. It combines Altran’s SPARK language and verification tools with AdaCore’s GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) and GNATbench Integrated Development Environments. There are SPARK versions based on Ada 83, Ada 95, and Ada 2005, so all standard Ada compilers and tools work out-of-the-box with SPARK.

The SPARK Pro language and toolset is specifically designed for developing applications where correct operation is vital for safety or security. It offers static verification that is unrivalled in terms of its soundness (no “false negatives”), low false-alarm rate, depth and efficiency. The toolset generates evidence for correctness, including proofs of the absence of run-time errors that can be used to meet the requirements of safety and security certification schemes, such as ISO 26262, DO-178B, DO-178C and the Common Criteria. SPARK Pro is especially applicable in the context of the Formal Methods supplement to DO-178C.

About TOYOTA InfoTechnology Center Co., Ltd.
TOYOTA InfoTechnology Center Co., Ltd. provides cutting-edge technology and creates value with superior intelligence and greater innovation throughout the IT business related to automobiles. TOYOTA ITC as a whole has as its objective the development of advanced, world-class information technologies to meet market needs. This includes the research, development and evaluation of technologies, hardware and software research, analysis and planning of market and business models, and the management of intellectual property rights.

TOYOTA ITC has North America headquarters in Mountain View, CA and the main office in Tokyo, Japan. www.toyota-itc.com

About Altran
Altran is a leading-edge engineering consultancy that enables UK business to work smarter – from making critical national infrastructure work safely, to bringing products and services to market quickly for the automotive, aerospace and life sciences industries. Altran has in-depth expertise in embedded and critical systems, product lifecycle management and engineering services. We have a global network of over 20,000 employees operating throughout more than 20 countries, and 500 major clients. Altran leads the world in specific areas of advanced systems engineering and innovation such as ultra-low defect software engineering, Human Machine Interface (HMI), safety engineering for complex or novel systems and tools/methods for systems engineering. www.altran.co.uk

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 see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railway 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

Jamie Ayre
AdaCore
press@adacore.com
http://twitter.com/AdaCoreCompany

Jessie Glockner
Rainier Communications (for AdaCore)
Tel: 508-475-0025 x140
adacore@rainierco.com
http://twitter.com/JessieGlockner

Owen Burdekin
Altran
Tel: +44 (0) 203 117 0714
owen.burdekin@altran.com

AdaCore Releases Major New Version of CodePeer Static Analysis Tool

2013-04-23T07:01:39+00:00

SAN JOSE, Calif., NEW YORK and PARIS, April 23, 2013 – Design West Conference – AdaCore today announced the release of CodePeer 2.2, the advanced static analysis tool that helps developers detect potential run-time and logic errors in Ada programs. CodePeer is able to find non-trivial problems by systematically analyzing every possible input and path through the program, and can be employed very early in the development cycle to identify defects when they are the least costly to repair.

CodePeer is fully integrated into the GNAT Pro development environment and comes with a number of complementary static analysis tools common to the technology – a coding standard verification tool (GNATcheck), a source code metric generator (GNATmetric), a semantic analyzer and a document generator.

CodePeer 2.2 introduces many improvements, driven by customer feedback, including:

• Integration into GNATbench, the GNAT Pro Ada plug-in for Eclipse and Wind River Systems Workbench
• Full support for GNAT project files
• Message review from HTML reports
• New “–level” switch to easily tune CodePeer messages and analysis time for any kind of code base
• More accurate analysis of math functions and floating point computations
• Export of messages to spreadsheets

“CodePeer 2.2 brings users an extra level of flexibility through interfaces to Eclipse, spreadsheets, and full HTML capabilities,” said Arnaud Charlet, CodePeer Product Manager at AdaCore. “This new release now provides solutions for the full range of Ada projects, including those with requirements for the highest levels of integrity and certification, as well as systems with large and complex code bases.”

Demonstration
A pre-recorded demo presented by Quentin Ochem introducing the latest CodePeer 2.2 features is currently available online. Please visit: http://www.adacore.com/knowledge/demos/codepeer-2-2

About CodePeer
Serving as an efficient and accurate code reviewer, CodePeer identifies constructs that are likely to lead to run-time errors such as buffer overflows, and it flags legal but suspect code, typical of logic errors. Going well beyond the capabilities of typical static analysis tools, CodePeer also produces a detailed analysis of each subprogram, including pre- and post-conditions. Such an analysis makes it easier to find potential bugs and vulnerabilities early: if the implicit specification deduced by CodePeer does not match the component’s requirements, a reviewer is alerted immediately to a likely logic error. During system development, CodePeer can help prevent errors from being introduced, and it can also be used as part of a systematic code review process to dramatically increase the efficiency of human review. Furthermore, CodePeer can be used retrospectively on existing code, to detect and remove latent bugs.

Pricing and Availability
CodePeer is immediately available. Please contact AdaCore (sales@adacore.com) for information on pricing and supported configurations.

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 open source 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 see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including space-based systems, commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railroad systems, and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains, such as financial services. The SPARK Pro toolset, available from AdaCore, is especially useful in such contexts.

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

Press Contacts

Jamie Ayre
AdaCore
press@adacore.com
http://twitter.com/AdaCoreCompany

Jessie Glockner
Rainier Communications (for AdaCore)
Tel: 508-475-0025 x140
adacore@rainierco.com
http://twitter.com/JessieGlockner

AdaCore Releases GNAT Pro 7.1

2013-04-23T07:00:21+00:00

Latest Ada development environment brings full Ada 2012 support and other enhancements

SAN JOSE, Calif., NEW YORK and PARIS, April 23, 2013 – Design West Conference – AdaCore today announced the availability of GNAT Pro 7.1, a major new version of the company’s flagship development environment. This release incorporates a number of enhancements, many based on user suggestions, including several Ada language related features, run-time improvements, and new and enhanced tools. As with all AdaCore products, GNAT Pro is Freely-Licensed Open Source Software (FLOSS).

The language related features in GNAT Pro 7.1 include updated and improved support for the Ada 2012 language revision, a new facility for automatic data endianness conversion, and support for dimensionality checking. Extended overflow check support and lock-free protected objects have been incorporated as run-time improvements, and the compiler technology has been migrated to the GCC 4.7 back-end.

New and enhanced tools that aid in all stages of the development of complex, multi-language software are also a major part of the GNAT Pro 7.1 release. These include the powerful and easy to use GPRBuild 2.0 tool that automates the construction of multi-language software, the GDB 7.5 debugger and new rules in the GNATcheck coding standard verification tool. GNAT Pro 7.1 also includes a major new release of AdaCore’s high-level graphical toolkit GtkAda, which provides a secure, user-friendly and extensible toolkit based on Gtk+. GtkAda 3 brings new widgets, a CSS based theming framework, and an improved application programming interface (API) that is more intuitive and that incorporates a more homogenous naming scheme.

“As usual, the new GNAT Pro release 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,” said Cyrille Comar, Managing Director of AdaCore. “The most striking new feature, support for automatic data endianness conversion, is already a customer favorite; who said that silver bullets were mythical?”

About GNAT Pro
The GNAT Pro development environment, available on more platforms than any other Ada toolset, is a full-featured, multi-language development environment complete with libraries, bindings and a range of supplementary tools. It provides a natural solution for organizations that need to create reliable, efficient and maintainable code. GNAT Pro implements all three versions of the Ada language standard – Ada 83, Ada 95, and Ada 2005 – and the latest version of GNAT Pro implements all new features in Ada 2012. GNAT Pro is based on the widely used GCC technology and is backed by rapid and expert support service.

Pricing and Availability
GNAT Pro 7.1 is available immediately on most supported platforms. Please contact AdaCore (sales@adacore.com) for further details on pricing and supported configurations.

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 open source 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.

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

Press Contacts

Jamie Ayre
AdaCore
press@adacore.com
http://twitter.com/AdaCoreCompany

Jessie Glockner
Rainier Communications (for AdaCore)
Tel: 508-475-0025 x140
adacore@rainierco.com
http://twitter.com/JessieGlockner

Introducing CodePeer 2.2

2013-04-23T06:00:04+00:00

This webinar presents the CodePeer technology, describing what it does, how it can be used to improve software quality, and what are the new features of the 2.2.1 release. It includes a demo highlighting how Ada 2012 and CodePeer can be used together to identify potential issues, add targeted checks and contracts, and find actual bugs in an application.

Gem #146 : Su(per)btypes in Ada 2012 - Part 1

2013-04-22T12:59:13+00:00

The new revision of Ada is full of features for specifying properties of types. In this series of three Gems, we describe three aspects that can be used to state invariant properties of types. This first Gem is concerned with the Static_Predicate aspect.