gnatmake ¶A typical development cycle when working on an Ada program consists of the following steps:
The third step in particular can be tricky, because not only do the modified
files have to be compiled, but any files depending on these files must also be
recompiled. The dependency rules in Ada can be quite complex, especially
in the presence of overloading, use clauses, generics and inlined
subprograms.
gnatmake automatically takes care of the third and fourth steps
of this process. It determines which sources need to be compiled,
compiles them, and binds and links the resulting object files.
Unlike some other Ada make programs, the dependencies are always
accurately recomputed from the new sources. The source based approach of
the GNAT compilation model makes this possible. This means that if
changes to the source program cause corresponding changes in
dependencies, they will always be tracked exactly correctly by
gnatmake.
Note that for advanced forms of project structure, we recommend creating
a project file as explained in the `GNAT_Project_Manager' chapter in the
`GPRbuild User’s Guide', and using the
gprbuild tool which supports building with project files and works similarly
to gnatmake.