Is there a free implementation of Ada?

Question

I looked at the AdaCore site, as well as for A# (which now appears to be owned by AdaCore) and neither appear to be free (although I could have misread something). Any recommendations?

Answer 1

GNAT is available for download here: https://libre.adacore.com/

Look for "GNAT GPL Edition". Not sure why it is so well hidden on that little known site.

Answer 2

Here's a big list of Ada compilers from Open Directory.

The GNU Ada compiler seems to be a more popular one.

Answer 3

GNAT, the GNU Ada implementation: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnat/gnat.html

Answer 4

In the past the ada front end was not packaged with the gcc compiler, but now the gnat ada compiler is bundled with the gcc compiler when you install most linux distributions. Of course there may be various development libraries that you may need for your own projects, but the ada front end is there. At least that has been my experience with debian and ubuntu over the last couple of years.

As for AdaCore, they hide the libre/free version of the gnat ada compiler because they want to you to buy support; which they can leagally do. However, the gcc compiler is GPL and is considered open source, which means you can use it for free.

Answer 5

Thomas, you can find the GPL edition of GNAT Adacore Ada framework in http://libre.adacore.com/libre/ and download it from http://libre.adacore.com/libre/download/. Just select Free Software or Academic Development and Build Download Package. The compiler is the option gnat-gpl-2011-i686-pc-mingw32-bin.exe, but there are several additional libraries in the list.