All implementations of GNAT provide a switch that causes GNAT to operate
in Ada 83 mode. In this mode, some but not all compatibility problems
of the type described above are handled automatically. For example, the
new reserved words introduced in Ada 95 and Ada 2005 are treated simply
as identifiers as in Ada 83. However,
in practice, it is usually advisable to make the necessary modifications
to the program to remove the need for using this switch.
See the Compiling Different Versions of Ada section in
the GNAT User’s Guide.
A number of pragmas and attributes from Ada 83 were removed from Ada 95,
generally because they were replaced by other mechanisms. Ada 95 and Ada 2005
compilers are allowed, but not required, to implement these missing
elements. In contrast with some other compilers, GNAT implements all
such pragmas and attributes, eliminating this compatibility concern. These
include pragma Interface and the floating point type attributes
(Emax, Mantissa, etc.), among other items.