We're happy to announce the fourth edition of our programming awards, The Ada/SPARK Crate of the Year Award! The Alire package manager is a game changer for Ada/SPARK, so we want to use this competition to reward the people contributing to the ecosystem.

Why “Crate”? This is the name the Alire project uses to designate a software project, library, or executable written using the Ada and/or SPARK programming languages and contributing to the Alire ecosystem. The word comes from the Cargo package manager.

How to enter?

We keep the same formula from last year, so you don’t have to register for the awards. Instead, we will consider any crate published in the Alire community index as a potential candidate for the awards.

We still invite you to promote your crate or suggest someone else’s crate for the awards on the ada-lang.io forum in this thread.

Timeline

The only thing that matters is that your crate has to be available in the Alire community index by the end of 2024. In early January 2025, we will select three winner candidates and contact the authors privately. We will announce the results to the public by the end of January 2025.

Prizes

This competition has three prizes of $2,000 each:

• The Ada Crate of the Year Prize for the best overall Ada crate;

• The SPARK Crate of the Year Prize, for the best crate written in SPARK and/or contributing to the SPARK ecosystem;

• The Embedded Crate of the Year Prize for the best Ada or SPARK crate for embedded software.

Getting started with Alire and Ada/SPARK

You can have a look at the Alire documentation. If you don’t know Ada/SPARK programming, we recommend starting with our interactive online courses here.

We also recommend contacting the Ada/SPARK and Alire community. Here are some links that you may find helpful:

• Gitter Alire chat room

• Gitter Ada chat room

• Reddit r/ada

• Ada-lang Forum

• Telegram Ada channel

You should also examine the existing Alire ecosystem to determine whether your excellent project idea exists or which existing crates might help in your endeavor.

Have fun and happy hacking!