AdaCore Blog

An Insight Into the AdaCore Ecosystem

International Women’s Day: My Career Journey

International Women’s Day: My Career Journey

Every 8th March, International Women’s Day is celebrated around the world - it’s a great opportunity to highlight women’s talents, their achievements, and what makes them great at what they do.This year’s theme is #InspireInclusion. At AdaCore, this got us thinking about what our team values the most and how we strive to create a sense of belonging and community, no matter who our people are, their level of seniority, or where they’re based.Viviane Garese and Sofia Casale reveal more about their career journeys, their accomplishments in Software Engineering and Sales, and how AdaCore’s core value of collaboration helps to inspire inclusion at work every day.

#International Women’s Day   

by Fabien Chouteau
BACK TO THE BUILDING BLOCKS: AdaCore’s Contributions to Secure and Measurable Software

BACK TO THE BUILDING BLOCKS: AdaCore’s Contributions to Secure and Measurable Software

The focus on enhancing cybersecurity through various technological approaches and methodologies, as detailed in the White House Office of the National Cyber Director’s (ONCD) document titled “Back to the Building Blocks: A Path Toward Secure and Measurable Software" underscores a pivotal shift in how organizations, especially those at the helm of technological innovation, must adapt and respond to the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats. This document provides an overview of some strategies and technologies that are critical in bolstering cybersecurity defenses.

#Cybersecurity    #memory safety    #Formal Verification   

by Maxim Reznik
Enhancing Ada Embedded Development: The Power of Real-Time Logging with RTT

Enhancing Ada Embedded Development: The Power of Real-Time Logging with RTT

Efficient embedded development in Ada relies on powerful tools. Real-time logging plays a pivotal role, enabling live monitoring and analysis. Unlike traditional methods, SEGGER's Real-Time Transfer (RTT) method offers hardware-independent real-time logging with low latency.This article explores RTT's simplicity: storing protocol data in a ring buffer on the target device, read by the debugger without halting program execution. The provided Ada code showcases RTT's implementation, from buffer types to control blocks.Integration with development environments is seamless, as seen with the Cortex Debug extension for VS Code. The extension supports RTT, providing features like textual and graphical display of RTT stream data.In summary, SEGGER's RTT method is a powerful, hardware-independent solution for real-time logging in Ada development. Its efficiency and flexibility make it indispensable for debugging, error detection, and security in embedded systems. Explore the GitHub repository for a hands-on experience with RTT in Ada embedded development.

#Embedded    #DIY    #vscode   

GNAT Static Analysis Suite: A Vision for Static Analysis in Ada

GNAT Static Analysis Suite: A Vision for Static Analysis in Ada

You may have noticed that over the past two years, we have made significant updates to our CodePeer product - the most visible change being the renaming of the product itself, now branded as “GNAT Static Analysis Suite”. For those who are already using the product and are looking to use the new version, it may be a good time to step back and share our vision, at AdaCore, for static analysis.

#Static Analysis    #GNATSAS    #CodePeer    #GNATcheck   

by Fabien Chouteau
Ada/SPARK Crate Of The Year 2023 Winners Announced!

Ada/SPARK Crate Of The Year 2023 Winners Announced!

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.

#Alire    #awards    #package manager    #SPARK    #Embedded   

by Ben Brosgol
Memory Safety in Rust

Memory Safety in Rust

Informally, memory safety in a program means that each data access is well behaved; i.e., is consistent with the item’s data type, does not impinge on any storage locations beyond the data value’s boundaries, and, if the program is multithreaded, does not produce an inconsistent or corrupted value. Memory safety violations result in undefined behavior, which is a Bad Thing: instances like the notorious “buffer overrun” can turn an otherwise safe and secure program into a ticking virtual time bomb. Some of the most eventful malware attacks in recent years are due to memory safety violations, and the topic has moved from techno-geek subreddits into mainstream discourse. Anyone developing or acquiring software, especially for applications with high assurance requirements, needs to pay attention.

#Rust    #memory safety   

by Fabien Chouteau
AdaCore Enhances GCC Security with Innovative Features

AdaCore Enhances GCC Security with Innovative Features

In a significant stride towards bolstering the security of the open-source ecosystem, AdaCore has recently contributed a set of security hardening features to the GCC project (GNU Compiler Collection). These features, designed to fortify the software produced by GCC against various cyber threats, highlight our commitment to advancing the field of secure programming and our 30+ years of contributing to the open-source software development ecosystem.

by Fabien Chouteau
Advent of Ada/SPARK 2023 Results

Advent of Ada/SPARK 2023 Results

At the end of November we called the Ada and SPARK programmers community to take on a challenge for a good cause. For each person completing one of the Advent of Code exercises using the Ada programming language, AdaCore would donate $10 to the Ada Developers Academy. And for those willing to go an extra mile, AdaCore would donate $20 if the solution is implemented in SPARK. We are now in January and it is time for the results!

by Fabien Chouteau
Announcing Advent of Ada 2023: Coding for a Cause!

Announcing Advent of Ada 2023: Coding for a Cause!

We're thrilled to kick off the holiday season with the second edition of Advent of Ada, a programming challenge that not only tests your coding skills but also contributes to a meaningful cause.As many of you know, Advent of Code has become a beloved tradition since its inception in 2015. The concept is simple yet brilliant: from December 1st to 25th, every day a new small programming exercise is published on the adventofcode.com website. Participants get points for each completed exercise.

by Joakim Strandberg (Alstom) Guest Author
Announcing Ada binding to the wolfSSL library

Announcing Ada binding to the wolfSSL library

Today, we at wolfSSL (https://www.wolfssl.com/) are happy to announce the availability of an Ada/SPARK binding that enables Ada applications to use post-quantum TLS 1.3 encryption through the wolfSSL embedded SSL/TLS library. The wolfSSL library is thread safe by design. Multiple threads can enter the library simultaneously without creating conflicts because wolfSSL avoids global data, static data, and the sharing of objects. When objects are used in the API the wolfSSL library provides opaque pointers to objects whose contents is only known internally by the wolfSSL library. This library interface design makes it easy to make bindings to other programming languages and at the same time enables the contents of the objects used internally to be highly configurable.

#wolfSSL   

by Olivier Henley
A little bit of Photoshop® using GNAT for CUDA®

A little bit of Photoshop® using GNAT for CUDA®

Today I want to go over some internal mechanisms of a Photoshop-like application to better illustrate an up-and-coming tech, GNAT for CUDA®, developed at AdaCore.

#CUDA    #GNAT Pro    #Photoshop    #GPU    #Ada    #AdaCore    #NVIDIA    #GPGPU    #Computer Vision    #Image Analysis    #Bilateral Filter    #Signal Processing    #parallel computing    #Surface Blur    #Image Processing   

by Jose Ruiz
Bare-metal C++ development environment for certifiable safety-critical applications

Bare-metal C++ development environment for certifiable safety-critical applications

We are happy to announce the availability of GNAT Pro for C++, a versatile development environment for bare-metal targets capable of supporting different subsets of the C++ language. It constitutes the best choice for safety-critical bare-metal systems that want to reduce complexity, memory footprint and execution-time overhead, paving the way to software certification. GNAT Pro for C++ targets popular hardware in the avionics, defense, railway, and space domains: PowerPC (32 bits), x86 (64 bits), RISC-V (32/64 bits), LEON3 (32 bits) and ARM (32/64 bits).

#C++    #Safety Critical Development    #Certification    #Bare-metal   

Identifying and authorizing users at AdaCore

Identifying and authorizing users at AdaCore

Back in the 90s when AdaCore was founded, the state of IT security was very different. A unique Unix login and password were enough to connect to a shared server and run business applications. Most of the protocols used were still unencrypted, and the most elaborate access controls were based on Unix groups and perimeter defense. As the company evolved, we gave users access to more and more services, some not hosted on-premise. More services meant distinct credentials. Security-savvy users, who did not accept reusing the same password everywhere, had the burden of maintaining all these distinct credentials. Most credentials were long-lived, and very often shared. Also as the notion of perimeter defense became more and more fuzzy with the introduction of PaaS, IaaS, .. the need for safer access and communication protocols increased significantly.

#DevOps    #Security