Introducing New Version of GNAT Programming Studio IDE

FAIRFAX, Va., November 6, 2007 - SIGAda 2007 - AdaCore, provider of the highest quality Ada tools and support services, today announced the upcoming release of GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) 4.2. This Ada-oriented IDE (Integrated Development Environment) accompanies AdaCore’s GNAT Pro toolset on most platforms.

With an emphasis on helping developers improve the quality and maintainability of their software, this GPS release includes a number of new features, enhancements, and plug-ins, including support for code coverage and improved generation of documentation. The advanced code coverage feature enables developers to test code and ensure that the software is properly covered, with the GPS user interface allowing them to visualize the coverage information at different levels of detail (from project down to source lines of code). The improved and faster documentation generator uses Web 2.0 technologies to generate HTML pages, thus providing a web-based view of projects.

“As software complexity increases, developers are looking for an environment to help them create high quality code that is straightforward to produce and understand,” commented Arnaud Charlet, GPS Project Manager at AdaCore. “GPS 4.2 delivers these capabilities. With its many enhancements based on customer feedback, it continues to be the environment of choice for professional Ada development.”

While GPS already supports the Ada 2005 standard, the GPS 4.2 enhancements will help developers take full advantage of both the new features as well as the existing Ada 95 object-oriented programming facilities. Furthermore, GPS includes multi-language support (including Ada, C, and C++) and is available on a wide range of host environments. Through its intuitive, unified visual interface, developers can access tools from both AdaCore and third parties, easing both development and maintenance.

New functions in GPS 4.2 include:

  • Graphical support for code coverage (gcov)
  • Improved documentation generation with faster, improved HTML output using CSS and javascript
  • Enhanced code completion, including support for the Object.Method syntax as provided in Ada 2005, Java, and C++
  • Full ability to manage files and directories from GPS
  • Source editor improvements - better tooltips, source navigation and indentation
  • Improved handling of dispatching calls and primitives, enabling better understanding (prior to run time) of which subprograms will be executed

New plug-ins, including:

  • Support for code verification through gnatcheck and addr2line
  • Listing of unused entities (replaces gnatxref)
  • Display of dependency paths across files
  • Ability to cut/copy/paste in contextual menu
  • Recomputation of Ada cross references
  • Copying of text with line numbers prepended
  • The ability to close all editors

As with all GNAT Pro components, GPS is distributed with full source code and is backed by AdaCore’s rapid and expert online support.

About GPS
GPS is a powerful Integrated Development Environment (IDE) written in Ada, based on the GtkAda toolkit. GPS’ extensive source-code navigation and analysis tools can generate a broad range of useful information, including call graphs, source dependencies, project organization, and complexity metrics. It also provides support for configuration management through an interface to third-party Version Control Systems, and supports a variety of platforms, including Altix Linux, IA64 HP Linux, Solaris (sparc and x86), GNU/Linux (x86 and x86-64), and x86 Windows (2000, 2003, XP and Vista). GPS is highly extensible; a simple scripting approach enables additional tool integration. It is also customizable, allowing programmers to specialize various aspects of the program’s appearance in the editor for a user-specified look and feel.

Pricing and Availability
GPS 4.2 is scheduled for release at the beginning of December 2007, when it will be available to GNAT Pro customers on selected platforms. GPS is included with the GNAT Pro Ada Development Environment. Please contact AdaCore (sales@adacore.com) for the latest information on pricing and supported configurations.

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a modern 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 worldwide customer base; see http://www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro continue to see 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.

Press Contact
press@adacore.com