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User:Yappy2bhere/AdaControl

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AdaControl
Developer(s)Adalog
Written inAda with ASIS
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
Available inEnglish
TypeStatic code analysis
LicenseGMGPL
Websitewww.adalog.fr/en/adacontrol.html

AdaControl is a free tool licensed under the GMGPL that detects the use of various kinds of constructs in Ada programs and violations of programming style or design patterns. Detectable constructs range from the presence of control characters, naming dependencies, and if statements that could be replaced by switch statements; depth of calls and declarations that could be moved into an inner scope; to calls to normally paired operations, elaboration calls, side effects in instantiations, and calls to potentially blocking operations.[1]

The software was created and is maintained by Adalog and only distributed as source. It was created for Eurocontrol to help develop a program to manage Europe's air traffic.

History

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The development of AdaControl by Adalog started in 2004, under a contract of Eurocontrol,[2] which developed the CFMU (Central Flow Management Unit [fr]), a million+ lines of code program (in Ada) to manage Air Traffic over Europe. Only automated tools could verify compliance of a program of that size to programming standards.

Since Eurocontrol had no interest in commercializing software, it was decided to release AdaControl as free software. This had the benefit of helping the Ada community at large, and at the same time, allowed Eurocontrol to enjoy further improvements made by the community. Later, other companies sponsored further development, creating a virtual consortium effect.[3]

Features

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AdaControl applies a set of controls to a set of Ada units. A control is defined by a rule (and possibly a subrule) with appropriate parameters. Controls (as well as various commands used to adjust the behaviour of the program) are provided directly from the command line, from a file, or interactively.

There is a wide range of controls available. As of current version(1.22r16c), there are 591 tests that can be performed by AdaControl. The number increases with each new release.[4]

In addition, AdaControl provides suggestions of fixes for a number of violations.[5] When AdaControl is launched from the GPS environment, the fixes can be performed by clicking on an icon, just like for compiler messages. A companion tool can also apply all suggested fixes automatically.[6]

Adacontrol is written in Ada, using ASIS for syntactic and semantic analysis. This gives the tool the same level of language accuracy as the underlying compiler.[7] An European Commission evaluation found that this "makes the application consume a lot of resources (processor, disk, and memory)."[1]

Great care has been taken to make the tool easily extensible by the user.[8]

References

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  1. ^ a b Deprez, Jean-Christophe; Ruiz, Jose; Herraiz, Israel; Garcia Campos, Carlos (2003-03-21), Iese, Fraunhofer (ed.), Evaluation Report on Existing Tools and Existing F/OSS repositories, The QUALOSS Consortium, p. 27, retrieved 2024-06-04
  2. ^ "Use of Free Software in European Air Traffic Flow Management [slide presentation]" (PDF). Eurocontrol. 2005. p. 28.
  3. ^ Rosen, Jean-Pierre (December 2005). "On the benefits for Industrials of Sponsoring Free Software Development" (PDF). Ada User Journal. 26 (4): 308-311.
  4. ^ AdaControl User's Guide
  5. ^ Andersen, Jacob Sparre (June 2010). An Efficient Implementation of Persistent Objects. Reliable Software Technologies - Ada Europe 2010. Valencia. p. 274. Although the technique does not require external tool support, the use of the technique will be safer with tool support. An obvious choice would be to add the required rule to AdaControl.
  6. ^ Rosen, Jean-Pierre; Van-Den-Hende, Jean-Christophe (September 2016). "Using Ada's Visibility Rules and Static Analysis to Enforce Segregation of Safety Critical Components" (PDF). Ada User Journal. 37 (3): 149. This can be checked by manual inspection; however AdaControl is also able to check these automatically, which is always preferable to human (and therefore fallible) inspection.
  7. ^ Coq, Thierry; Rosen, Jean-Pierre (2011). The SQALE Quality and Analysis Models for Assessing the Quality of Ada Source Code. Reliable Software Technologies – Ada-Europe 2011. Edinburgh. p. 67. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-21338-0. ISBN 978-3-642-21337-3. Since it is an ASIS tool, its analysis on the language is based on the same technology as the compiler, thus increasing the confidence that the tool processes the language correctly.
  8. ^ AdaControl Programmer's Manual

As of 08 December 2021, this article is derived in whole or in part from Adalog. The copyright holder has licensed the content in a manner that permits reuse under CC BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL. All relevant terms must be followed. The original text was at "AdaControl"

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  1. ^ "Reliable Software Technologies – Ada-Europe 2017". Conference proceedings. Vienna: Springer. June 2017. p. V-VI. The conference program also included nine industrial contributions arranged in three industrial presentation sessions.... The industrial program featured the following presentations: ... "Introducing Static Analysis to a Mature Project," Jacob Sparre Andersen, JSA Research & Innovation, Denmark
  2. ^ Andersen, Jacob Sparre (June 2017). "Introducing static analysis to a mature project" (PDF). Abstracts: Industrial Presentations. Reliable Software Technologies – Ada-Europe 2017. Vienna. p. 8.
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