Ada Plugin for Xcode

Table of Contents

1. What is Ada ?

From Ada's page on wikipedia :

Ada is a structured, statically typed imperative computer programming language designed by a team led by Jean Ichbiah of CII Honeywell Bull during 1977–1983. It addresses many of the same tasks as C or C++, but with one of the best type-safety systems available in a statically typed programming language. Ada was named after Ada Lovelace, who is often credited with being the first computer programmer.

You may find much information at www.adapower.org and www.macada.org.

2. Description

This Xcode plugin allow you to :

• use syntax highlighting (already provided by Xcode)
• add Ada source files to this target like you do for a C program
• integration of the Ada binder and linker
• create a Ada projet or target with Xcode
• modify the Ada compiler or linker settings through the Xcode's build-in build setting GUI.
• adding a library in library build phase of a Ada target
• use C code in a Ada program (i.e. the main function is in Ada)
• debug your code from Xcode

However, as it's a beta version, it doesn't support yet :

• dependencies between source files (at this time, automaticaly touch file that need to be recompiled and ask the user to rebuild)
• building libraries, bundles (only shell tools at this time)
• using Ada code in a C program (i.e. the main function is in C)
• cross compilation, universal binaries, zerolink
• support for aflex and ayacc
• …

3. Download & Install

Requirement :

• Xcode 3.0 (which itself only runs on Mac OS X 10.5.x).
• GNU Ada development tools (GNAT 4.2) for Tiger (available here, in folder "Ada". You need to uncompress it into /usr/local/).
  Mirrored PPC version (4.2.0-20060429)

Download it and read the README for installation instructions.

If you want to use another version of GNAT, it's possible. You just need to replace all paths starting with /usr/local/ada-4.2/bin by the path where is installed your GNAT binaries in files in the folder : AdaPlugin.pbplugin/Contents/Resources/.

4. License & Source Code

The Ada plugin is distributed under the GPL license.

Access the source code from the SVN repository at :

The description of Xcode's plugin interface.

Sourceforge page for Xcode Plugins

I'd like to thank :

• James E. Hopper from the macada.org web site for his useful tests and help about compilation issues with GNAT.
• Andrew Reynolds for making the GNAT compiler available on Mac OS X.

Copyright © 2005 Damien Bobillot, E-Mail : damien.bobillot.2002_adaplugin CHEZ m4x.org