Compatibility with Other Ada 95 Systems

Providing that programs avoid the use of implementation dependent and implementation defined features of Ada 95, as documented in the Ada 95 reference manual, there should be a high degree of portability between GNAT and other Ada 95 systems. The following are specific items which have proved troublesome in moving GNAT programs to other Ada 95 compilers, but do not affect porting code to GNAT.

Ada 83 Pragmas and Attributes

Ada 95 compilers are allowed, but not required, to implement the missing Ada 83 pragmas and attributes that are no longer defined in Ada 95. GNAT implements all such pragmas and attributes, eliminating this as a compatibility concern, but some other Ada 95 compilers reject these pragmas and attributes.

Special-needs Annexes

GNAT implements the full set of special needs annexes. At the current time, it is the only Ada 95 compiler to do so. This means that programs making use of these features may not be portable to other Ada 95 compilation systems.

Representation Clauses

Some other Ada 95 compilers implement only the minimal set of representation clauses required by the Ada 95 reference manual. GNAT goes far beyond this minimal set, as described in the next section.