gps vs gnat pro

gps vs gnat pro

[Ananth the Boss]

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.

Re: gps vs gnat pro

[Marc A. Criley]

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

Re: gps vs gnat pro

[Ludovic Brenta]

To complement Marc's answer, read the recent thread on this newsgroup
titled:

How available is 'freely available'?

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: gps vs gnat pro

[Ananth the Boss]

thanks people for ur suggestions

Re: gps vs gnat pro

[Martin Krischik]

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.

You misread! It's:

GNAT vs GNAT/Pro
GPS vs GPS/Pro
ASIS vs ASIS/Pro

etc. pp.

The Pro versions are supported by AdaCore. As for the difference:

All professional questions I send to AdaCore using my employers Pro account
got answered the same day. Questions and Bugreports I for my private home
projects did not get the same level of attention from AdaCore - to put it
nicely.

If human live are at stake from the software you are planning to develop
then you should get an GNAT/Pro account.

Martin
-- 
mailto://krischik@users.sourceforge.net
Ada programming at: http://ada.krischik.com

Re: gps vs gnat pro

[Georg Bauhaus]

On Fri, 2006-04-28 at 18:27 +0200, Martin Krischik wrote:


> If human live are at stake from the software you are planning to develop
> then you should get an GNAT/Pro account.

Or at least, get professional support for your selected Ada
compilation system, which will either be from AdaCore, or from
some one of the other Ada IDE makers.
I understand you are busy talking to relevant suppliers
of Ada tools?