In 2023 we announced the third edition of the Ada/SPARK Crate Of The Year Awards. We see the Alire source package manager as a game changer for Ada/SPARK, so we want to use the Crate of the Year awards to honor the people contributing to the ecosystem. This edition was different from the previous ones: we decided to depart from a submissions-based approach and instead consider all crates available in the Alire ecosystem. Today we are pleased to announce the results.

Here are the winners of the 2023 Crate of the Year Awards.

The Ada Crate of the Year Prize is awarded to Tama McGlinn for AdaBots

AdaBots is a captivating educational platform for children, making programming fun and accessible by offering a world that young learners can explore and shape through code. Using a simple API, an Ada program controls a robot inside a video game called Minetest (an open-source clone of Minecraft). This robot can move around, check surrounding blocks, and build and destroy blocks.

AdaBots draws a fascinating parallel to the iconic Logo Turtles of yesteryear. I have fond memories of preparing the sequence of cards to make the turtle draw my initials on the floor. Just as the Logo Turtles introduced a generation to the joys of programming and computational thinking through simple, graphical commands, AdaBots is paving the way for today's children to engage with coding in a similarly intuitive and playful manner.

For more information, you can visit the AdaBots website.

The Embedded Crate of the Year Prize is awarded to German Rivera for HiRTOS

HiRTOS is a high-integrity Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) kernel and separation kernel written in SPARK Ada. It is implemented on top of a minimal platform-independent Ada runtime and a porting layer that provides a platform-agnostic interface.

Many embedded developers attempt to write their own operating system, but few achieve the level of completeness that German has with HiRTOS. The availability of this project is a plus for the Alire ecosystem.

The SPARK Crate of the Year Prize is awarded to Rod Chapman for SPARKNaCl

Originally aimed at re-implementing the cryptography library TweetNaCl in SPARK, the project exceeded its initial goal, demonstrating SPARK's capacity to handle complex and high-performance applications.

This achievement, combined with its competitive performance and efficient code size, makes SPARKNaCl not only a theoretical showcase of high-assurance programming but also a practical, deployable library. Furthermore, SPARKNaCl's compatibility with the GNAT Light runtime library (previously known as "Zero Footprint") showcases its versatility, allowing deployment across diverse platforms. This blend of technical sophistication and practical applicability makes SPARKNaCl a valuable asset to the Alire ecosystem.

Conclusion

Thanks again to all the participants, and stay tuned for more news on the Ada/SPARK Crate Of The Year Awards.