XPost: comp.compilers

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ada 2012 Language Standard Corrigendum Approved by ISO

Milestone marks smooth continuation of Ada language standardization
process

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EMBEDDED WORLD 2016, Nuremberg, Germany, February 23, 2016 -
The Ada Resource Association (ARA) and Ada-Europe today announced
that an update to the Ada 2012 language standard, formally known as
Technical Corrigendum 1 to ISO/IEC 8652:2012, has been approved and
officially published by the Geneva-based International Organization
for Standardization (ISO). Comprising a variety of clarifications
and minor corrections driven by implementation and user experience,
the Corrigendum was developed under the auspices of Working Group
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9, in particular by WG9's Ada Rapporteur Group
(ARG), and was issued on February 1, 2016. This work was supported
in part by the ARA and Ada-Europe.

The publication of the Corrigendum highlights the steady and orderly
evolution of the Ada programming language. New versions of the
standard are published by ISO at roughly ten-year intervals. Between
releases, the ARG reviews the standard for completeness, correctness,
and unambiguity, and also considers and analyzes proposed updates
ranging from minor wording changes to the addition of major new
features. Especially in the case of new features, the ARG performs
a careful analysis of the tradeoffs among the design choices, taking
into account the requirements of all the stakeholders (existing Ada
users, potential new users, compiler implementors, thirdparty tool
providers, educators and researchers, etc.) This process has worked successfully since the language's inception more than thirty years
ago, resulting in precisely defined standards that are issued in a
timely fashion and that meet the evolving needs of the Ada community.

A consolidated Ada 2012 Language Reference Manual, consisting of
the Ada 2012 standard as updated by changes from the Corrigendum,
is available online: www.ada-auth.org/standards/ada12_w_tc1.html/.

"In this phase of the language standardization process, the focus
is on attention to detail, so the Corrigendum has 'fine-tuned' the
wording to make sure that the standard is correct," said Dr. Joyce
Tokar, WG9 Convenor. "It has also enhanced the control provided
by contract-based programming, so the Ada programmer can not only
specify the preconditions and predicates that apply to inputs, but
also identify which particular exceptions should be raised when a
precondition or predicate fails. The preconditions and predicates
can thus fully specify an API's requirements, and the consequences
of failure when these requirements are not met. The Corrigendum
represents an important contribution to the Ada community."


About Ada 2012

Ada 2012 has brought significant enhancements to Ada, most notably in
the area of "contract-based programming." Features here include the
ability to specify preconditions and postconditions for subprograms,
and invariants for private (encapsulated) types. These take the form
of Boolean expressions that can be interpreted (under programmer
control) as run-time conditions to be checked. The contract-based
programming features fit in smoothly with Ada's Object-Oriented
Programming model, and support the type substitutability guidance
supplied in the Object-Oriented Technologies and Related Techniques
Supplement (DO-332) to the avionics software safety standard DO-178C
/ ED-12C.

Other Ada 2012 improvements include enhancements to the containers
library, increased expressiveness through features such as conditional expressions and more powerful iterators, and support for multicore
platforms (task affinities, and the extension of the Ravenscar profile
- standardized in Ada 2005 as an efficient and predictable tasking
subset for high-integrity real-time systems - to multiprocessor and
multicore environments).

A technical summary of Ada 2012, together with an explanation of
the language's benefits and a set of links to further information,
is available at www.ada2012.org, a website maintained by the Ada
Resource Association.


About the Ada Resource Association

The Ada Resource Association (ARA) is a non-profit organization
chartered to support the continued evolution of the Ada language and
its infrastructure, to serve as a source of information about Ada and
its usage, and to promote Ada as a language for effective software
engineering. To these ends, the ARA maintains the Ada Information
Clearinghouse website www.adaic.org and has provided funding
for the development and maintenance of the Ada language standard
and the Ada Conformance Assessment Test Suite. For information
about the ARA, including sponsorship opportunities, please visit www.adaresource.com. The ARA is headquartered in Oakton, VA (US).


About Ada-Europe

Ada-Europe is the international non-profit organization that
promotes the knowledge and use of the Ada programming language
in academia, research and industry in Europe. Its flagship event
is the annual international conference on reliable software
technologies, a high-quality technical and scientific event that
has been successfully running in the current format for the last 20
years. Ada-Europe has member organizations all over the continent,
in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland,
as well as individual members in many other countries. For information
about Ada-Europe, its charter, activities and sponsors, please visit: www.ada-europe.org. Ada-Europe is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.

A PDF version of this press release is available at www.ada-europe.org.


Organization Contacts

Ada Resource Association
Ben Brosgol, ARA President
brosgol@adacore.com

Ada-Europe
Tullio Vardanega, Ada-Europe President
president@ada-europe.org


Press Contacts

Ada Resource Association
Jenna Beaucage
Rainier Communications
Tel: +1-508-475-0025 x124
jbeaucage@rainierco.com

Ada-Europe
Dirk Craeynest, Ada-Europe Vice-president
c/o KU Leuven, Department of Computer Science
dirk.craeynest@cs.kuleuven.be

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