Re: installing SPARK GPL on Windows

[Phil Thornley <phil.jpthornley@gmail.com>]

On 7 Aug, 18:43, Ada novice <po...@gmx.us> wrote:
> Hi, I've been trying to install SPARK GPL on a Windows machine. I
> already have GNAT GPL (and GPS). I found a brief introduction to SPARK
> here:
>
> http://www.adacore.com/2009/06/29/gem-68/
>
> For the installation, I added  C:\SPARK\2010\bin to the Windows path
> environment and overwrote the existing  spark.py in the GNAT folder by
> this operation mentioned in the SAPRK manual:
>
> Copy the file spark.py from <spark_install_dir>/share/gps/plug-ins to
> <gnatpro_install_dir>/share/gps/plug-ins.
>
> If I understand correctly, this is all I need to do for the
> installation. However in GPS I don't get a SPARK menu header. I
> checked Tools > Plugins and Spark is checked though. What do I need to
> do more for the installation to succeed? Does SPARK GPL work with GNAT
> GPL?

It all worked out-of-the box for me (Windows 7 Pro).

Are you sure that you have the path set correctly (and have you
restarted after changing the path - that sometimes helps).

The SPARK GPS manual says that the plug-in is only installed if GPS
finds the SPARK tools in the path.  You can check this by opening up a
command window and typing "spark -version".  This just responds with
the current version of SPARK and doesn't try to analyse any files.

>
> On a related note, if I understand correctly then SPARK GPL only
> features a subset of the Ada language. Does this implies that not
> every program in Ada will work with SPARK?

Ahhh, you definitely need to read a bit more about SPARK.  Start with
the SPARK_LRM in SPARK\2010\docs which has all the background and
rationale for the language.

Cheers,

Phil