25.4 Converting Ada Files to HTML with gnathtml

This Perl script allows Ada source files to be browsed using standard Web browsers. For installation procedure, see the section See Installing gnathtml.

Ada reserved keywords are highlighted in a bold font and Ada comments in a blue font. Unless your program was compiled with the gcc -gnatx switch to suppress the generation of cross-referencing information, user defined variables and types will appear in a different color; you will be able to click on any identifier and go to its declaration.

The command line is as follow:

     $ perl gnathtml.pl [switches] ada-files

You can pass it as many Ada files as you want. gnathtml will generate an html file for every ada file, and a global file called index.htm. This file is an index of every identifier defined in the files.

The available switches are the following ones:

-83

Only the subset on the Ada 83 keywords will be highlighted, not the full Ada 95 keywords set.

-cc color

This option allows you to change the color used for comments. The default value is green. The color argument can be any name accepted by html.

-d

If the Ada files depend on some other files (for instance through with clauses, the latter files will also be converted to html. Only the files in the user project will be converted to html, not the files in the run-time library itself.

-D

This command is the same as -d above, but gnathtml will also look for files in the run-time library, and generate html files for them.

-ext extension

This option allows you to change the extension of the generated HTML files. If you do not specify an extension, it will default to htm.

-f

By default, gnathtml will generate html links only for global entities ('with'ed units, global variables and types,...). If you specify -f on the command line, then links will be generated for local entities too.

-l number

If this switch is provided and number is not 0, then gnathtml will number the html files every number line.

-I dir

Specify a directory to search for library files (.ALI files) and source files. You can provide several -I switches on the command line, and the directories will be parsed in the order of the command line.

-o dir

Specify the output directory for html files. By default, gnathtml will saved the generated html files in a subdirectory named html/.

-p file

If you are using Emacs and the most recent Emacs Ada mode, which provides a full Integrated Development Environment for compiling, checking, running and debugging applications, you may use .gpr files to give the directories where Emacs can find sources and object files.

Using this switch, you can tell gnathtml to use these files. This allows you to get an html version of your application, even if it is spread over multiple directories.

-sc color

This switch allows you to change the color used for symbol definitions. The default value is red. The color argument can be any name accepted by html.

-t file

This switch provides the name of a file. This file contains a list of file names to be converted, and the effect is exactly as though they had appeared explicitly on the command line. This is the recommended way to work around the command line length limit on some systems.