GNAT is the GNU Ada Compiler based on GCC. Originally its name was an acronym that stood for GNU NYU Ada Translator, but nowadays it does not have any meaning. The front-end and runtime are written in Ada.

The project started in 1992 when the United States Air Force awarded the New York University (NYU) a contract to build an open source compiler for Ada to help with the Ada 9X standardization process. The 3-million-dollar contract required the use of the GNU GPL for all developments, and assignment of copyright to the Free Software Foundation. The first official validation of GNAT happened in 1995.

In 1994 and 1996, the original authors of GNAT founded two sister companies, Ada Core Technologies in New York City and ACT-Europe in Paris, to provide continuing development and commercial support of GNAT. Both companies were integrated and renamed to AdaCore in 2004.

GNAT was initially released separately from the main GCC sources. On October 2, 2001 the GNAT sources were contributed to the GCC CVS repository. The last version to be released separately was GNAT 3.15p, based on GCC 2.8.1, on October 2, 2002. Starting with GCC 3.4, on major platforms the official GCC release is able to pass 100% of the ACATS Ada tests included in the GCC testsuite. In GCC 4.0, more exotic platforms are also able to pass 100% of ACATS.

The compiler is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The run-time is licensed under either the GNU General Public License ("GNAT GPL Edition" from AdaCore), or the GNAT Modified General Public License (GCC, GNAT Pro). It is part of most major GNU/Linux or BSD distributions.

JGNAT is a GNAT version that compiles from the Ada programming language to Java bytecode.

See also

• GCC
• Ada programming language
• Ada Programming/Installing

External links

• AdaCore explain their business model and history
• AdaCore - professional support for GNAT
• Libre - Public versions of GNAT
• Ada Information Clearinghouse - The Ada Resource Association's web site
• Debian Ada Policy - how Debian packages GNAT and programs written in Ada
• The GNU Ada Project - more public versions of GNAT
• GNAT in the GCC wiki
• Write It in Ada — Run It on the Java Virtual Machine

4-letter acronyms | Ada programming language | GNU project software | New York University | Free compilers and interpreters

GNAT | GNAT | GNAT | GNAT