Time Stamping a Program in Ada-95

[Austin Obyrne <austin.obyrne@hotmail.com>]

Time Stamping a Program in Ada-95 

If I ‘compile to listing’ using the “Run – Compile to Listing” facility in Ada-95 I can get a time stamp declaration of the day and exact time instant of that compiling that is very useful in a court of law later as documentary evidence but if I subsequently compile as usual later on i.e. just by clicking on the ‘compile’ button in the toolbar of my editor it overwrites that earlier time stamp – I think.

Lemme explain a bit better.  When I complete a piece of development work that evolves as a piece of software I will want to secure the copyright.  Although there are many ways of doing this the way I favour most is the intrinsic time stamp method i.e. if I compile to listing I will get a print-out of the compiler number and the exact time and day on which it was last compiled.  This is powerful evidence of copyright.

This is only useful however if it has not been accidentally overwritten later by another compile-to-listing operation by the same compiler or by a copy of that compiler.

I want to try and prevent that happening accidentally. 

Does anybody know more about this – is it possible to do both without losing the time stamp facility i.e. compile to listing and ordinary periodic compiling from the tool bar also?

If this is not possible to prevent it should be brought to the notice of the powers that be in Ada as a useful security function going begging ??

Your help would be appreciated as usual.

- adacrypt