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Welcome to the AdaCore Developer Center, the place to get the latest GNAT Pro technology news and resources such as technical papers, live docs and expert tips on programming in Ada.

AdaCore Development Log

Monday May 5, 2008

Gem #34: Safe and Secure Software : Chapter 2, Safe Typing

This week’s gem is the second chapter of John Barnes’ new booklet:

Safe and Secure Software: An Introduction to Ada 2005.

Over the coming months, we will be publishing all thirteen chapters of the booklet. In the attachment at the bottom of Gem #30 you can access the contents and bibliography for the entire booklet. We hope you will enjoy the read!


Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Posted in Development Log, Ada / Ada 2005, Devt log - Gem of the Week

Tuesday April 29, 2008

Designing Safe and Secure Systems

Ben Brosgol’s tutorial at SSTC 2008, entitled “Safety and Security: An Analysis of Certification Issues and Technologies for High-Integrity Software”.

Today’s interconnected critical systems must be both safe and secure; software developers and decision makers need to understand the operative certification standards and their implications on technology choice and system development. This presentation first summarizes the DO-178B avionics safety standard and the Common Criteria / Common Evaluation Methodology security standard. It identifies the requirements that these standards impose on programming language technology and development tools, and explains how safety and security considerations are similar and how they differ. It describes how modern programming language features such as Object-Oriented Programming affect safety and security certification, and assesses several current language family approaches — C / C++, Ada / SPARK, and Java — against safety and security requirements.

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Posted by Posted in Development Log, Ada / Ada 2005

Monday April 28, 2008

Gem #33: Accessibility Checks (Part I: Ada95)

Ada Gem #33 — The existence of dangling references (pointers to objects that no longer exist) in a program can have catastrophic results. Ada incorporates a set of “accessibility rules” that help the programmer prevent dangling references, making programs more secure.
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Posted by Posted in Development Log, Ada / Ada 2005, Devt log - Gem of the Week

Thursday April 24, 2008

[GNAT] gnatlink “–GCC=gcc -xxx”

When gnatlink is invoked with –GCC= with an executable that is the same as the default one (gcc or <prefix>-gcc) and additional options, the back end switches from the ALI file are also used to compile the binder generated sources.

Posted by Posted in Development Log, GNAT Compilation System

Thursday April 24, 2008

[GNAT] Wider access to GCC builtins from Ada

Raw access to most of the GCC builtin functions is now possible thanks to Intrinsic import pragmas, allowing for instance access to very low level information like the current call frame return address or inline expansion of common math routines.

Posted by Posted in Development Log, GNAT Compilation System

Wednesday April 23, 2008

[GNAT] New attribute Excluded_Source_List_File

A new attribute Excluded_Source_List_File is added to the Project Manager. Its value is a single string that designates a text file that contains the list of simple file names that should not be considered as sources of the project.

Posted by Posted in Development Log, GNAT Compilation System

Monday April 21, 2008

Gem #32: Safe and Secure Software : Chapter 1, Safe Syntax

This week’s gem is the first chapter of John Barnes’ new booklet:

Safe and Secure Software: An Introduction to Ada 2005.

Over the coming months, we will be publishing all thirteen chapters of the booklet. In the attachment at the bottom of Gem #30 you can access the contents and bibliography for the entire booklet. We hope you will enjoy the read!


Read the rest of this entry »

application/pdf
608.2Kb
 

Posted by Posted in Development Log, Ada / Ada 2005, Devt log - Gem of the Week

Sunday April 20, 2008

[GNAT] Warning on redundant slices

If a one-dimensional constant array object A is declared with an index subtype S, then the slice A (S) is flagged as redundant to indicate that the construct could be optimized simply to A.

Posted by Posted in Development Log, GNAT Compilation System

Sunday April 20, 2008

[GNAT] gnatname: different patterns for different dirs

gnatname may now be invoked so that different patterns apply to different directories, using a new switch –and to separate sections of directories/patterns. Example: gnatname -d src1 "*.ada" –and -d src2 "*.spec" ".body"

Posted by Posted in Development Log, GNAT Compilation System

Thursday April 17, 2008

[GNAT] Direct visibility on variables in ancestors

In a child project, there is now direct visibility on project level variables and string types in the ancestor of the project. For example, in project Parent.Child any variable and string type in project Parent is directly visible.

Posted by Posted in Development Log, GNAT Compilation System