In Gem #52, we saw various facilities that GNAT provides to make Ada a scripting language (sort of). We discussed GNAT.Command_Line, GNATCOLL.Mmap, GNAT.Regpat and GNAT.AWK. This Gem continues the discussion of scripting capabilities, and focuses on interaction with external processes.

Abstract. This article discusses the tools that Ada offers to deal with dynamic memory problems. The article shows how the storage pools mechanism of Ada 95 can be extended to enpower developers when tracking memory leaks and memory corruption in their code. This Ada extension rests on the notion of "checked pools", i.e. storage pools with an additional Dereference operation. The paper describes how a particular instance of the checked pool, called the "debug pool", is implemented in the GNAT technology. Performance measurements for the use of debug pools are provided in the context of the Air Traffic Flow Management application at Eurocontrol.

gprbuild is a new program builder, superseding gnatmake. It supports multiple languages, automatically manages source dependencies, and reduces the need for recompilation. This Gem describes a high-level view of how gprbuild works.

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GPS has a multitude of views and editors, several of which may be displayed on the screen at the same time. It is based on a very flexible desktop that helps you organize these windows the way you prefer. This Gem describes some of the lesserknown aspects of the GPS desktop.