The new release by AdaCore of GNAT Pro 7.2 is a major release of this Ada software development environment that includes 120+ new features and extends support across platforms.
This latest GNAT Pro tools implement the Ada 2012 language standard by default — and improved functionality brings Ada developers GNAT Pro onto more native and "cross platform" platforms instances than any other Ada development environment.
The 7.2 release adds support for Wind River's VxWorks Cert and LynuxWorks' LynxOS-178 Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS). It also extends GNAT Pro's ARM support to now include Android, generic Linux on ARM, Bareboard ARM, and Wind River's VxWorks 6 on ARM.
GNAT Pro 7.2 comes with the GPS (GNAT Programming Studio) 6.0 Integrated Development Environment for developer editing, plus there are a number of design improvements that bring program-related information to bear.
AdaCore explains that the revised look and feel is supported by a new relational database at the heart of the GPS engine to make code navigation more efficient.
This release also includes a new version of GNATbench, the Eclipse plug-in. GNATbench 2.8 provides improved support for Wind River's WorkBench, a new source navigation engine, and improved support for the CodePeer static analysis tool.
GNAT Pro 7.2 includes new tools such as GNAT2XML, which generates XML files from Ada sources and helps developers write Ada analysis tools in any language. Enhancements to existing tools include a new version of GNATpp (pretty printer) with improved Ada layout, and an enhanced GPRbuild multi-purpose builder that offers greater flexibility and support of both distributed and parallel builds.
Other new features of GNAT Pro 7.2 include new warnings and improved diagnostics, code generation optimizations, support for symbolic traceback in shared libraries, and improved cross Ada/C++ exception handling.
"With so many new features and tools in GNAT Pro 7.2, it's difficult to choose which to highlight," said Cyrille Comar, AdaCore EU managing director. "I'll pick the new, extremely efficient distributed build capability. Its first industrial user reported that the build time for its complete multi-million SLOC application went down from two hours to five minutes on a Linux farm with dozens of machines."
