1. About This ManualΒΆ
This Manual contains reference material for developers using ASIS-for-GNAT — GNAT’s implementation of the Ada Semantic Interface Specification (ASIS). It provides information about ASIS-for-GNAT’s implementation-specific characteristics and current implementation limitations. (The term ‘implementation-specific’ in ASIS means what is called ‘implementation-defined’ in the Ada Reference Manual.)
ASIS has been designed as a portable basis for many kinds of Ada code analysis tools. However, for situations where a developer may need to exploit the characteristics of a particular Ada compiler, ASIS also contains a number of implementation-specific features. These allow interfacing with the underlying Ada implementation, as well as exploiting the implementation permissions for particular queries.
Of course, any ASIS application that uses implementation-specific features may be nonportable. You should follow good programming practice and isolate and clearly document any sections of your program that make use of such features in a nonportable manner.
What This Manual Contains
This manual contains the following chapters:
- ASIS-for-GNAT and the ASIS Standard, describes the relationship between ASIS-for-GNAT and the existing ASIS International Standard.
- ASIS Extensions, describes the contents of the packages
Asis.Extensions
,Asis.Extensions.Flat_Kinds
andAsis.Extensions.Iterator
. - Implementation-Specific Features and Implementation Permissions, presents the aspects of the ASIS definition that are implementation specific and describes their treatment in ASIS-for-GNAT.
- Debugging Information, describes the kinds of debugging information that you can generate with ASIS-for-GNAT.
What You Should Know Before Reading This Manual
This Reference Manual assumes that you are familiar with Ada 95 language as defined by the International Standard ISO/IEC-8652:1995, and with ASIS 95 as defined by the ASIS 95 International Standard ISO/IEC 15291:1999.
This Manual supplements the information presented in the ASIS-for-GNAT User’s Guide and uses the terminology introduced there.
Related Information
For more information, please refer to the following documents:
- GNAT User’s Guide
- ASIS-for-GNAT User’s Guide
- Ada 95 Reference Manual
- ASIS 95 Standard