Node: Implementation Defined Characteristics, Next: Intrinsic Subprograms, Previous: Implementation Advice, Up: Top
In addition to the implementation dependent pragmas and attributes, and the implementation advice, there are a number of other features of Ada 95 that are potentially implementation dependent. These are mentioned throughout the Ada 95 Reference Manual, and are summarized in annex M.
A requirement for conforming Ada compilers is that they provide documentation describing how the implementation deals with each of these issues. In this chapter, you will find each point in annex M listed followed by a description in italic font of how GNAT handles the implementation dependence.
You can use this chapter as a guide to minimizing implementation
dependent features in your programs if portability to other compilers
and other operating systems is an important consideration. The numbers
in each section below correspond to the paragraph number in the Ada 95
Reference Manual.
2. Whether or not each recommendation given in Implementation Advice is followed. See 1.1.2(37). |
3. Capacity limitations of the implementation. See 1.1.3(3). |
The complexity of programs that can be processed is limited only by the
total amount of available virtual memory, and disk space for the
generated object files.
4. Variations from the standard that are impractical to avoid given the implementation's execution environment. See 1.1.3(6). |
There are no variations from the standard.
5. Which |
Any code_statement
can potentially cause external interactions.
6. The coded representation for the text of an Ada program. See 2.1(4). |
See separate section on source representation.
7. The control functions allowed in comments. See 2.1(14). |
See separate section on source representation.
8. The representation for an end of line. See 2.2(2). |
See separate section on source representation.
9. Maximum supported line length and lexical element length. See 2.2(15). |
The maximum line length is 255 characters an the maximum length of a
lexical element is also 255 characters.
10. Implementation defined pragmas. See 2.8(14). |
See Implementation Defined Pragmas.
11. Effect of pragma |
Pragma Optimize
, if given with a Time
or Space
parameter, checks that the optimization flag is set, and aborts if it is
not.
12. The sequence of characters of the value returned by
|
The sequence of characters is as defined by the wide character encoding
method used for the source. See section on source representation for
further details.
13. The predefined integer types declared in
|
Short_Short_Integer
Short_Integer
Integer
Long_Integer
Long_Long_Integer
14. Any nonstandard integer types and the operators defined for them. See 3.5.4(26). |
There are no nonstandard integer types.
15. Any nonstandard real types and the operators defined for them. See 3.5.6(8). |
There are no nonstandard real types.
16. What combinations of requested decimal precision and range are supported for floating point types. See 3.5.7(7). |
The precision and range is as defined by the IEEE standard.
17. The predefined floating point types declared in
|
Short_Float
Float
Long_Float
Long_Long_Float
18. The small of an ordinary fixed point type. See 3.5.9(8). |
Fine_Delta
is 2**(-63)
19. What combinations of small, range, and digits are supported for fixed point types. See 3.5.9(10). |
Any combinations are permitted that do not result in a small less than
Fine_Delta
and do not result in a mantissa larger than 63 bits.
If the mantissa is larger than 53 bits on machines where Long_Long_Float
is 64 bits (true of all architectures except ia32), then the output from
Text_IO is accurate to only 53 bits, rather than the full mantissa. This
is because floating-point conversions are used to convert fixed point.
20. The result of |
Block numbers of the form B
nnn, where nnn is a
decimal integer are allocated.
21. Implementation-defined attributes. See 4.1.4(12). |
See Implementation Defined Attributes.
22. Any implementation-defined time types. See 9.6(6). |
There are no implementation-defined time types.
23. The time base associated with relative delays. |
See 9.6(20). The time base used is that provided by the C library
function gettimeofday
.
24. The time base of the type |
The time base used is that provided by the C library function
gettimeofday
.
25. The time zone used for package |
The time zone used by package Calendar
is the current system time zone
setting for local time, as accessed by the C library function
localtime
.
26. Any limit on |
There are no such limits.
27. Whether or not two non overlapping parts of a composite
object are independently addressable, in the case where packing, record
layout, or |
Separate components are independently addressable if they do not share
overlapping storage units.
28. The representation for a compilation. See 10.1(2). |
A compilation is represented by a sequence of files presented to the
compiler in a single invocation of the gcc
command.
29. Any restrictions on compilations that contain multiple compilation_units. See 10.1(4). |
No single file can contain more than one compilation unit, but any
sequence of files can be presented to the compiler as a single
compilation.
30. The mechanisms for creating an environment and for adding and replacing compilation units. See 10.1.4(3). |
See separate section on compilation model.
31. The manner of explicitly assigning library units to a partition. See 10.2(2). |
If a unit contains an Ada main program, then the Ada units for the partition are determined by recursive application of the rules in the Ada Reference Manual section 10.2(2-6). In other words, the Ada units will be those that are needed by the main program, and then this definition of need is applied recursively to those units, and the partition contains the transitive closure determined by this relationship. In short, all the necessary units are included, with no need to explicitly specify the list. If additional units are required, e.g. by foreign language units, then all units must be mentioned in the context clause of one of the needed Ada units.
If the partition contains no main program, or if the main program is in
a language other than Ada, then GNAT
provides the binder options -z and -n respectively, and in this case a
list of units can be explicitly supplied to the binder for inclusion in
the partition (all units needed by these units will also be included
automatically). For full details on the use of these options, refer to
the User Guide sections on Binding and Linking.
32. The implementation-defined means, if any, of specifying which compilation units are needed by a given compilation unit. See 10.2(2). |
The units needed by a given compilation unit are as defined in
the Ada Reference Manual section 10.2(2-6). There are no
implementation-defined pragmas or other implementation-defined
means for specifying needed units.
33. The manner of designating the main subprogram of a partition. See 10.2(7). |
The main program is designated by providing the name of the
corresponding ali file as the input parameter to the binder.
34. The order of elaboration of |
The first constraint on ordering is that it meets the requirements of
chapter 10 of the Ada 95 Reference Manual. This still leaves some
implementation dependent choices, which are resolved by first
elaborating bodies as early as possible (i.e. in preference to specs
where there is a choice), and second by evaluating the immediate with
clauses of a unit to determine the probably best choice, and
third by elaborating in alphabetical order of unit names
where a choice still remains.
35. Parameter passing and function return for the main subprogram. See 10.2(21). |
The main program has no parameters. It may be a procedure, or a function
returning an integer type. In the latter case, the returned integer
value is the return code of the program.
36. The mechanisms for building and running partitions. See 10.2(24). |
GNAT itself supports programs with only a single partition. The GNATDIST
tool provided with the GLADE package (which also includes an implementation
of the PCS) provides a completely flexible method for building and running
programs consisting of multiple partitions. See the separate GLADE manual
for details.
37. The details of program execution, including program termination. See 10.2(25). |
See separate section on compilation model.
38. The semantics of any non-active partitions supported by the implementation. See 10.2(28). |
Passive partitions are supported on targets where shared memory is
provided by the operating system. See the GLADE reference manual for
further details.
39. The information returned by |
Exception message returns the null string unless a specific message has
been passed by the program.
40. The result of |
Blocks have implementation defined names of the form B
nnn
where nnn is an integer.
41. The information returned by
|
Exception_Information
contains the expanded name of the exception
in upper case, and no other information.
42. Implementation-defined check names. See 11.5(27). |
No implementation-defined check names are supported.
43. The interpretation of each aspect of representation. See 13.1(20). |
See separate section on data representations.
44. Any restrictions placed upon representation items. See 13.1(20). |
See separate section on data representations.
45. The meaning of |
Size for an indefinite subtype is the maximum possible size, except that
for the case of a subprogram parameter, the size of the parameter object
is the actual size.
46. The default external representation for a type tag. See 13.3(75). |
The default external representation for a type tag is the fully expanded
name of the type in upper case letters.
47. What determines whether a compilation unit is the same in two different partitions. See 13.3(76). |
A compilation unit is the same in two different partitions if and only
if it derives from the same source file.
48. Implementation-defined components. See 13.5.1(15). |
The only implementation defined component is the tag for a tagged type,
which contains a pointer to the dispatching table.
49. If |
Word_Size
(32) is not the same as Storage_Unit
(8) for this
implementation, so no non-default bit ordering is supported. The default
bit ordering corresponds to the natural endianness of the target architecture.
50. The contents of the visible part of package |
See the definition of these packages in files system.ads
and
s-stoele.ads
.
51. The contents of the visible part of package
|
See the definition and documentation in file s-maccod.ads
.
52. The effect of unchecked conversion. See 13.9(11). |
Unchecked conversion between types of the same size
and results in an uninterpreted transmission of the bits from one type
to the other. If the types are of unequal sizes, then in the case of
discrete types, a shorter source is first zero or sign extended as
necessary, and a shorter target is simply truncated on the left.
For all non-discrete types, the source is first copied if necessary
to ensure that the alignment requirements of the target are met, then
a pointer is constructed to the source value, and the result is obtained
by dereferencing this pointer after converting it to be a pointer to the
target type.
53. The manner of choosing a storage pool for an access type
when |
There are 3 different standard pools used by the compiler when
Storage_Pool
is not specified depending whether the type is local
to a subprogram or defined at the library level and whether
Storage_Size
is specified or not. See documentation in the runtime
library units System.Pool_Global
, System.Pool_Size
and
System.Pool_Local
in files s-poosiz.ads
,
s-pooglo.ads
and s-pooloc.ads
for full details on the
default pools used.
54. Whether or not the implementation provides user-accessible names for the standard pool type(s). See 13.11(17). |
See documentation in the sources of the run time mentioned in paragraph
53 . All these pools are accessible by means of with
'ing
these units.
55. The meaning of |
Storage_Size
is measured in storage units, and refers to the
total space available for an access type collection, or to the primary
stack space for a task.
56. Implementation-defined aspects of storage pools. See 13.11(22). |
See documentation in the sources of the run time mentioned in paragraph
53 for details on GNAT-defined aspects of storage pools.
57. The set of restrictions allowed in a pragma
|
All RM defined Restriction identifiers are implemented. The following additional restriction identifiers are provided. There are two separate lists of implementation dependent restriction identifiers. The first set requires consistency throughout a partition (in other words, if the restriction identifier is used for any compilation unit in the partition, then all compilation units in the partition must obey the restriction.
Boolean_Entry_Barriers
Max_Entry_Queue_Depth => Expr
No_Calendar
Ada.Calendar
.
No_Dynamic_Interrupts
No_Enumeration_Maps
No_Entry_Calls_In_Elaboration_Code
No_Exception_Handlers
No_Implicit_Conditionals
No_Implicit_Loops
for
loops, either by modifying
the generated code where possible,
or by rejecting any construct that would otherwise generate an implicit
for
loop. The details and use of this restriction are described in
more detail in the GNORT Reference Manual.
No_Local_Protected_Objects
No_Protected_Type_Allocators
No_Select_Statements
select
may not appear.
This is one of the restrictions of the Ravenscar
profile for limited tasking (see also pragma Ravenscar).
No_Standard_Storage_Pools
No_Streams
Ada.Streams
.
No_Task_Attributes
Ada.Task_Attributes
.
No_Task_Termination
No_Wide_Characters
Wide_Character
or Wide_String
appear, and that no wide character literals
appear in the program (that is literals representing characters not in
type Character
.
Static_Priorities
Ada.Dynamic_Priorities
.
Static_Storage_Size
The second set of implementation dependent restriction identifiers does not require partition-wide consistency. The restriction may be enforced for a single compilation unit without any effect on any of the other compilation units in the partition.
No_Elaboration_Code
No_Entry_Queue
No_Implementation_Attributes
No_Implementation_Pragmas
No_Implementation_Restrictions
No_Implementation_Restrictions
itself)
are present. With this restriction, the only other restriction identifiers
that can be used are those defined in the Ada 95 Reference Manual.
58. The consequences of violating limitations on
|
Restrictions that can be checked at compile time result in illegalities
if violated. Currently there are no other consequences of violating
restrictions.
59. The representation used by the |
The representation is the in-memory representation of the base type of
the type, using the number of bits corresponding to the
type
'Size
value, and the natural ordering of the machine.
60. The names and characteristics of the numeric subtypes
declared in the visible part of package |
See items describing the integer and floating-point types supported.
61. The accuracy actually achieved by the elementary functions. See A.5.1(1). |
The elementary functions correspond to the functions available in the C
library. Only fast math mode is implemented.
62. The sign of a zero result from some of the operators or
functions in |
The sign of zeroes follows the requirements of the IEEE 754 standard on
floating-point.
63. The value of
|
Maximum image width is 649, see library file a-numran.ads
.
64. The value of
|
Maximum image width is 80, see library file a-nudira.ads
.
65. The algorithms for random number generation. See A.5.2(32). |
The algorithm is documented in the source files a-numran.ads
and
a-numran.adb
.
66. The string representation of a random number generator's state. See A.5.2(38). |
See the documentation contained in the file a-numran.adb
.
67. The minimum time interval between calls to the time-dependent Reset procedure that are guaranteed to initiate different random number sequences. See A.5.2(45). |
The minimum period between reset calls to guarantee distinct series of
random numbers is one microsecond.
68. The values of the |
See the source file ttypef.ads
for the values of all numeric
attributes.
69. Any implementation-defined characteristics of the input-output packages. See A.7(14). |
There are no special implementation defined characteristics for these
packages.
70. The value of |
All type representations are contiguous, and the Buffer_Size
is
the value of type
'Size
rounded up to the next storage unit
boundary.
71. External files for standard input, standard output, and standard error See A.10(5). |
These files are mapped onto the files provided by the C streams
libraries. See source file i-cstrea.ads
for further details.
72. The accuracy of the value produced by |
If more digits are requested in the output than are represented by the
precision of the value, zeroes are output in the corresponding least
significant digit positions.
73. The meaning of |
These are mapped onto the argv
and argc
parameters of the
main program in the natural manner.
74. Implementation-defined convention names. See B.1(11). |
The following convention names are supported
Ada
Asm
Assembler
C
C_Pass_By_Copy
COBOL
CPP
Default
DLL
Win32
External
Fortran
Intrinsic
Import
with convention Intrinsic, see
separate section on Intrinsic Subprograms.
Stdcall
Stubbed
Program_Error
exception. If a
pragma Import
specifies convention stubbed
then no body need
be present at all. This convention is useful during development for the
inclusion of subprograms whose body has not yet been written.
In addition, all otherwise unrecognized convention names are also
treated as being synonymous with convention C. In all implementations
except for VMS, use of such other names results in a warning. In VMS
implementations, these names are accepted silently.
75. The meaning of link names. See B.1(36). |
Link names are the actual names used by the linker.
76. The manner of choosing link names when neither the link name nor the address of an imported or exported entity is specified. See B.1(36). |
The default linker name is that which would be assigned by the relevant
external language, interpreting the Ada name as being in all lower case
letters.
77. The effect of pragma |
The string passed to Linker_Options
is presented uninterpreted as
an argument to the link command, unless it contains Ascii.NUL characters.
NUL characters if they appear act as argument separators, so for example
pragma Linker_Options ("-labc" & ASCII.Nul & "-ldef");
causes two separate arguments "-labc" and "-ldef" to be passed to the linker with a guarantee that the order is preserved (no such guarantee exists for the use of separate Linker_Options pragmas).
In addition, GNAT allow multiple arguments to Linker_Options
with exactly the same meaning, so the above pragma could also be
written as:
pragma Linker_Options ("-labc", "-ldef");
The above multiple argument form is a GNAT extension.
78. The contents of the visible part of package
|
See files with prefix i-
in the distributed library.
79. Implementation-defined children of package
|
See files with prefix i-
in the distributed library.
80. The types |
Floating
Long_Floating
Binary
Long_Binary
Decimal_Element
COBOL_Character
For initialization, see the file i-cobol.ads
in the distributed library.
81. Support for access to machine instructions. See C.1(1). |
See documentation in file s-maccod.ads
in the distributed library.
82. Implementation-defined aspects of access to machine operations. See C.1(9). |
See documentation in file s-maccod.ads
in the distributed library.
83. Implementation-defined aspects of interrupts. See C.3(2). |
Interrupts are mapped to signals or conditions as appropriate. See
definition of unit
Ada.Interrupt_Names
in source file a-intnam.ads
for details
on the interrupts supported on a particular target.
84. Implementation-defined aspects of pre-elaboration. See C.4(13). |
GNAT does not permit a partition to be restarted without reloading,
except under control of the debugger.
85. The semantics of pragma |
Pragma Discard_Names
causes names of enumeration literals to
be suppressed. In the presence of this pragma, the Image attribute
provides the image of the Pos of the literal, and Value accepts
Pos values.
86. The result of the |
The result of this attribute is an 8-digit hexadecimal string
representing the virtual address of the task control block.
87. The value of |
Protected entries or interrupt handlers can be executed by any
convenient thread, so the value of Current_Task
is undefined.
88. The effect of calling |
The effect of calling Current_Task
from an entry body or
interrupt handler is to return the identification of the task currently
executing the code.
89. Implementation-defined aspects of
|
There are no implementation-defined aspects of Task_Attributes
.
90. Values of all |
The metrics information for GNAT depends on the performance of the
underlying operating system. The sources of the run-time for tasking
implementation, together with the output from -gnatG
can be
used to determine the exact sequence of operating systems calls made
to implement various tasking constructs. Together with appropriate
information on the performance of the underlying operating system,
on the exact target in use, this information can be used to determine
the required metrics.
91. The declarations of |
See declarations in file system.ads
.
92. Implementation-defined execution resources. See D.1(15). |
There are no implementation-defined execution resources.
93. Whether, on a multiprocessor, a task that is waiting for access to a protected object keeps its processor busy. See D.2.1(3). |
On a multi-processor, a task that is waiting for access to a protected
object does not keep its processor busy.
94. The affect of implementation defined execution resources on task dispatching. See D.2.1(9). |
Tasks map to threads in the threads package used by GNAT. Where possible
and appropriate, these threads correspond to native threads of the
underlying operating system.
95. Implementation-defined |
There are no implementation-defined policy-identifiers allowed in this
pragma.
96. Implementation-defined aspects of priority inversion. See D.2.2(16). |
Execution of a task cannot be preempted by the implementation processing
of delay expirations for lower priority tasks.
97. Implementation defined task dispatching. See D.2.2(18). |
The policy is the same as that of the underlying threads implementation.
98. Implementation-defined |
The only implementation defined policy permitted in GNAT is
Inheritance_Locking
. On targets that support this policy, locking
is implemented by inheritance, i.e. the task owning the lock operates
at a priority equal to the highest priority of any task currently
requesting the lock.
99. Default ceiling priorities. See D.3(10). |
The ceiling priority of protected objects of the type
System.Interrupt_Priority'Last
as described in the Ada 95
Reference Manual D.3(10),
100. The ceiling of any protected object used internally by the implementation. See D.3(16). |
The ceiling priority of internal protected objects is
System.Priority'Last
.
101. Implementation-defined queuing policies. See D.4(1). |
There are no implementation-defined queueing policies.
102. On a multiprocessor, any conditions that cause the completion of an aborted construct to be delayed later than what is specified for a single processor. See D.6(3). |
The semantics for abort on a multi-processor is the same as on a single
processor, there are no further delays.
103. Any operations that implicitly require heap storage allocation. See D.7(8). |
The only operation that implicitly requires heap storage allocation is
task creation.
104. Implementation-defined aspects of pragma
|
There are no such implementation-defined aspects.
105. Implementation-defined aspects of package
|
There are no implementation defined aspects of package Real_Time
.
106. Implementation-defined aspects of
|
Any difference greater than one microsecond will cause the task to be
delayed (see D.9(7)).
107. The upper bound on the duration of interrupt blocking caused by the implementation. See D.12(5). |
The upper bound is determined by the underlying operating system. In
no cases is it more than 10 milliseconds.
108. The means for creating and executing distributed programs. See E(5). |
The GLADE package provides a utility GNATDIST for creating and executing
distributed programs. See the GLADE reference manual for further details.
109. Any events that can result in a partition becoming inaccessible. See E.1(7). |
See the GLADE reference manual for full details on such events.
110. The scheduling policies, treatment of priorities, and management of shared resources between partitions in certain cases. See E.1(11). |
See the GLADE reference manual for full details on these aspects of
multi-partition execution.
111. Events that cause the version of a compilation unit to change. See E.3(5). |
Editing the source file of a compilation unit, or the source files of
any units on which it is dependent in a significant way cause the version
to change. No other actions cause the version number to change. All changes
are significant except those which affect only layout, capitalization or
comments.
112. Whether the execution of the remote subprogram is immediately aborted as a result of cancellation. See E.4(13). |
See the GLADE reference manual for details on the effect of abort in
a distributed application.
113. Implementation-defined aspects of the PCS. See E.5(25). |
See the GLADE reference manual for a full description of all implementation
defined aspects of the PCS.
114. Implementation-defined interfaces in the PCS. See E.5(26). |
See the GLADE reference manual for a full description of all
implementation defined interfaces.
115. The values of named numbers in the package
|
Max_Scale
Min_Scale
Min_Delta
Max_Delta
Max_Decimal_Digits
116. The value of |
64
117. The value of |
64
118. The accuracy actually achieved by the complex elementary functions and by other complex arithmetic operations. See G.1(1). |
Standard library functions are used for the complex arithmetic
operations. Only fast math mode is currently supported.
119. The sign of a zero result (or a component thereof) from
any operator or function in |
The signs of zero values are as recommended by the relevant
implementation advice.
120. The sign of a zero result (or a component thereof) from
any operator or function in
|
The signs of zero values are as recommended by the relevant
implementation advice.
121. Whether the strict mode or the relaxed mode is the default. See G.2(2). |
The strict mode is the default. There is no separate relaxed mode. GNAT
provides a highly efficient implementation of strict mode.
122. The result interval in certain cases of fixed-to-float conversion. See G.2.1(10). |
For cases where the result interval is implementation dependent, the
accuracy is that provided by performing all operations in 64-bit IEEE
floating-point format.
123. The result of a floating point arithmetic operation in
overflow situations, when the |
Infinite and Nan values are produced as dictated by the IEEE
floating-point standard.
124. The result interval for division (or exponentiation by a negative exponent), when the floating point hardware implements division as multiplication by a reciprocal. See G.2.1(16). |
Not relevant, division is IEEE exact.
125. The definition of close result set, which determines the accuracy of certain fixed point multiplications and divisions. See G.2.3(5). |
Operations in the close result set are performed using IEEE long format
floating-point arithmetic. The input operands are converted to
floating-point, the operation is done in floating-point, and the result
is converted to the target type.
126. Conditions on a |
The result is only defined to be in the perfect result set if the result
can be computed by a single scaling operation involving a scale factor
representable in 64-bits.
127. The result of a fixed point arithmetic operation in
overflow situations, when the |
Not relevant, Machine_Overflows
is True
for fixed-point
types.
128. The result of an elementary function reference in
overflow situations, when the |
IEEE infinite and Nan values are produced as appropriate.
129. The value of the angle threshold, within which certain elementary functions, complex arithmetic operations, and complex elementary functions yield results conforming to a maximum relative error bound. See G.2.4(10). |
Information on this subject is not yet available.
130. The accuracy of certain elementary functions for parameters beyond the angle threshold. See G.2.4(10). |
Information on this subject is not yet available.
131. The result of a complex arithmetic operation or complex
elementary function reference in overflow situations, when the
|
IEEE infinite and Nan values are produced as appropriate.
132. The accuracy of certain complex arithmetic operations and certain complex elementary functions for parameters (or components thereof) beyond the angle threshold. See G.2.6(8). |
Information on those subjects is not yet available.
133. Information regarding bounded errors and erroneous execution. See H.2(1). |
Information on this subject is not yet available.
134. Implementation-defined aspects of pragma
|
Pragma Inspection_Point
ensures that the variable is live and can
be examined by the debugger at the inspection point.
135. Implementation-defined aspects of pragma
|
There are no implementation-defined aspects of pragma Restrictions
. The
use of pragma Restrictions [No_Exceptions]
has no effect on the
generated code. Checks must suppressed by use of pragma Suppress
.
136. Any restrictions on pragma |
There are no restrictions on pragma Restrictions
.