Re: gps vs gnat pro

Ananth the Boss wrote:
gps and adagide is available for free distribution. gnat pro having
same features (infact some more additional features)is available for
purchase.will the gps have library that will not be the latest since it
is available for free. can we use gps for safety critical software dev
or gnat pro purchase is required. can any body suggest where will gps
fail or the point where gps will not be suitable.

GPS, or GNAT Programming Studio, is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment). In other words, an integrated editing environment that has a number of well-integrated features and capabilities.

GNAT Pro is an Ada Development Environment, and consists of a suite of tools, including compiler, utilities, libraries, _and_ GPS.


GNAT Pro will be the best-integrated and functional of GNAT-based development environments, mainly because AdaCore is being paid to support and maintain it. For paying customers, AdaCore will also respond to any issues that do arise in your use of the product.


Free distributions of GNAT-based development environments do not have this level of support, although there is conscientious and active support of various distributions by committed individuals. (AdaCore itself does also distribute GNAT GPL 2005 for Free Software development, but maintains it only on an "as time permits" basis.)

The components in these other non-AdaCore distributions are somewhat at the mercy of AdaCore's release of public sources. So it is fairly likely that a free distribution will not have all of the latest and greatest sources. And while there's nothing to stop individuals from making their own source code updates, there's usually a reluctance to get out in front of AdaCore, as that runs the risk of forking the code base.

For the development of truly safety critical software, one would be ill-advised to attempt to go it alone with an unsupported development environment. Given that the costs of development, integration, testing, and certification of a safety critical system are going to far outweigh the cost of the development tools, it would be foolish to attempt to save a few thousand dollars by working without vendor support.

-- Marc A. Criley
-- McKae Technologies
-- www.mckae.com
-- DTraq - XPath In Ada - XML EZ Out

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