Javier Miranda's Ada Corner

jmiranda@iuma.ulpgc.es
Applied Microelectronics Research Institute
University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Canary Islands
Spain
Last Upgrade: December, 14, 2002

This page provides free documentation on the free GNU Ada Compiler (GNAT). Please, send to me an e-mail if you want to receive a notification as soon as this documentation is upgraded.

PLEASE, If you reference this book in your publications, send to me the full reference of your work and (if possible) a PDF or PS copy of your paper.

I welcome additional documents, papers, or references to enhance this document.

Enjoy !

• Free Book: A Detailed Description of the GNU Ada Run-Time (J.Miranda, 2002)
  • Brief description HTML Document with full access to the GNAT 3.15p sources and the html version of the Annotated Ada Reference Manual (Technical Corrigendum 1). Most of the referenced documents are also available in Postscript and PDF formats.

  • Author: Javier Miranda
  • Version: 1.0
  • License: This book can be distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

  • Link to the HTML On-line Version
  • Link to the Postscript file
  • Link to the PDF file
  • Link to the DVI file
  • HTML sources distribution.. It includes a patch script which allows you to install the html sources locally or on a web server. The basic instructions for installation are in the README file.
  • SOURCES distribution. LaTeX sources and figures. In addition it has one script to re-generate the PostScript, PDF, and HTML files.

  • Current chapters:
    1. The GNAT Project.
    2. Task Types and Objects.
    3. The Rendezvous.
    4. Protected Objects.
    5. Time and clocks
    6. Interrupts (upgraded)
    7. Exceptions.
    8. Abortion.
    9. Bibliography.
    10. Index.

    
    

  • Previous upgrades:
    • September, 5, 2002 (Version 0.7). The compressed sources of the html distribution is added to the web server (file gnat-rts-html-v0.7.tgz).

    • September, 4, 2002 (Version 0.7). Due to some minor problems in the PDF file, the following files were re-generated: gnat-rts.dvi, gnat-rts.pdf, and gnat-rts.ps. The contents of the books is the same of the release of the previous day.

    • September, 3, 2002 (Version 0.7).
      1. The document becomes free. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
      2. The major changes done to each chapter are:
         1. The GNAT Project: some links added.
         2. Task Types and Objects (upgraded): task abortion has been moved to a separate chapter (and extended); section 2.2.4 (run-time subprograms for task creation and termination) has been briefly upgraded.
         3. The Rendezvous (upgraded): timed sentences have been moved to the new chapter on ``time and clocks''; ATC has been moved to a separate chapter (and extended); section 3.2 has been re-structured.
         4. Protected Objects (upgraded): added a new introduction on Ada 95 protected objects; the section on the GNAT implementation has been re-structured.
         5. Time and clocks (new chapter)
         6. Interrupts
         7. Exceptions (new chapter)
         8. Abort and Asynchronous Transfer of Control (new chapter)
         9. Bibliography (upgraded): added full references to the papers; the on-line papers are now available from the NEC CiteSeer Scientific Literature Digital Library

    • July, 15, 2002 (Version 0.6)
      • The third chapter (Rendezvous) has been completed and upgraded. Additionally a new introduction on the Ada Rendezvous has been included.
    • July, 10, 2002 (Version 0.5)
      • The second chapter (Tasks) has been upgraded (a new introduction on the Ada tasks has been also included).
      • New html links added to the first chapter.
    • July, 8, 2002 (Version 0.4)
      • New chapter on Interrupts.
      • Integrated with the html version of the Annotated Ada Reference Manual (Technical Corrigendum 1).
    • July, 4, 2002 (Version 0.3)
      • Upgraded to the GNAT 3.14p sources.
      • Incorrect links updated.
      • Added links to the GNAT sources in the Protected Objects chapter.
      • The contents of the html pages has been extended to include the subsections.
    • July, 1, 2002: First Release.

  A previous version of this document can be found at: http://www.iuma.ulpgc.es/users/gsd/Drago/: How to modify the GNAT Run-Time to experiment with Ada Extensions by J.Miranda, F. Guerra, A.Gonzalez, and J.J.Martin.

Short Biography

Javier Miranda was born in 1965 in Canary Islands (Spain). He studied Computer Science Engineering at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. He finished his studies by implementing a Modula-2 compiler under the direction of José Fortes Gálvez.

In 1990 he went to the Technical University of Madrid (Department of Telematic Systems Enginnering --DIT) to do his PhD research under the direction of Angel Álvarez and Sergio Arévalo (in the Distributed Systems Research Group). In 1994 he finished his PhD thesis entitled ``Drago: A Language for Programming Fault-Tolerant and Cooperative Distributed Applications.

In 1997, he started a project to integrate Drago into the GNAT sources. This project was done in collaboration with his colleague Francisco Guerra (who implemented the required protocols by means of the Group_IO Ada Library), and the students Alexis Rodríguez and José Jerónimo Martín.

After the project he personally continued upgrading Drago to the next GNAT distributions. This book summarizes the experience achieved during these years.