GNAT

For other uses, see Gnat (disambiguation).

GNAT

File:Gps.png Ada source within GPS
Developer(s)	AdaCore and the GNU Project
Stable release	GNAT Pro 6.2 (2009-03-03) [1] GNAT GPL 2008 (2008-06-11) GNAT GAP 2008 (2008-06-05)
Operating system	GNU/Linux, Solaris/SPARC, Microsoft Windows, et al.
Type	Compiler
License	GNU GPL-compatible MGPL
Website	GNAT Pro GNAT GPL GNAT GAP

GNAT is a free-software compiler for the Ada programming language which forms part of the GNU Compiler Collection. It supports all versions of the language, i.e. Ada 2005, Ada 95 and Ada 83. Originally its name was an acronym that stood for GNU NYU Ada Translator, but that name no longer applies. The front-end and run-time are written in Ada.

JGNAT is a GNAT version that compiles from the Ada programming language to Java bytecode. GNAT for dotNET is a GNAT version that compiles from the Ada programming language to Common Language Infrastructure for the .NET Framework and the free and open source implementations Mono and Portable.NET.

History

The project started in 1992 when the United States Air Force awarded the New York University (NYU) a contract to build an open source compiler for Ada to help with the Ada 9X standardization process. The 3-million-dollar contract required the use of the GNU GPL for all developments, and assignment of copyright to the Free Software Foundation. The first official validation of GNAT happened in 1995.

In 1994 and 1996, the original authors of GNAT founded two sister companies, Ada Core Technologies in New York City and ACT-Europe in Paris, to provide continuing development and commercial support of GNAT. Both companies were integrated and renamed to AdaCore in 2004.

GNAT was initially released separately from the main GCC sources. On October 2, 2001 the GNAT sources were contributed to the GCC CVS repository. The last version to be released separately was GNAT 3.15p, based on GCC 2.8.1, on October 2, 2002. Starting with GCC 3.4, on major platforms the official GCC release is able to pass 100% of the ACATS Ada tests included in the GCC testsuite. In GCC 4.0, more exotic platforms are also able to pass 100% of ACATS.

License

The compiler is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The run-time is licensed under either the GNU General Public License ("GNAT GPL Edition" from AdaCore), or the GNAT Modified General Public License (GCC, GNAT Pro). It is part of most major GNU/Linux or BSD distributions.

See also

• GCC
  • GCJ
  • gfortran
• PolyORB
• GNAT Programming Studio

Further reading

• Javier Miranda, Edmond Schonberg (June 2004). GNAT: The GNU Ada Compiler. https://www2.adacore.com/gap-static/GNAT_Book/html/index.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-06. 
• Edmond Schonberg, Bernard Banner (1994). "The GNAT project". Proceedings of the conference on TRI-Ada '94. ACM. pp. 48–57. doi:10.1145/197694.197706. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=197706. Retrieved 2008-06-07. 

External links

• History of the GNAT Project
• GNAT in the GCC wiki
• The GNU Ada Project — more public versions of GNAT
• Debian Ada Policy — packaging of GNAT and other Ada programs in Debian
• Write It in Ada — Run It on the Java Virtual Machine