About the Aida library

If you are considering making an Ada or SPARK application then the Aida library may be of interest to you. Developing formally verified software is very time consuming and thus very expensive. The goal of the Aida library is to lower the cost of mission-critical and security-critical applications by providing common functionality implemented in formally verified software.

The Aida library consists of (mostly) formally verified SPARK and conforms to the Ada 2012 standard. It has successfully been compiled using GNAT Community Edition 2016 and 2017 on both Ubuntu 16.04 and Windows 10.

Design goals:

• Minimize external dependencies. If you have an Ada 2012 compiler you are good to go.
• Use SPARK whenever possible.

The Aida library provides for example conversion routines for basic types. Consider:

with Aida.Text_IO;

procedure Main is
   User_Input : constant String := "123";

   I : constant Aida.Int32_T := Aida.String.To_Int32 (User_Input);

   Result : constant String := Aida.Int32.To_String (I);
begin
   Aida.Text_IO.Put_Line ("User entered: ", Result);
end Main;

The output of the application is:

User entered: 123

If one would like to formally verify the above code using the SPARK tools (SPARK Discovery 2017) one would need to add the SPARK_Mode aspect to the Main procedure:

with Aida.Text_IO;

procedure Main with SPARK_Mode is
   User_Input : constant String := "123";

   I : constant Aida.Int32_T := Aida.String.To_Int32 (User_Input);

   Result : constant String := Aida.Int32.To_String (I);
begin
   Aida.Text_IO.Put_Line ("User entered: ", Result);
end Main;

The traditional way of converting an integer to a string is to use the Integer'Image (..) function and to use the Integer'Value (..) function to convert in the other direction. These functions lack the pre- and post-conditions that the SPARK tools need for static code analysis. The functions Aida.Int32.To_String (..) and Aida.String.To_Int32 (..) in the Aida library have all the pre- and post-conditions needed.

Pure SPARK packages:

Package	Description
Aida	Contains conversion subprograms for Standard value types.
Aida.Bounded_String	Bounded string implementation
Aida.Containers.Bounded_Hash_Map	Bounded hash map implementation
Aida.Containers.Bounded_Vector	Bounded vector implementation
Aida.Containers.Tagged_Bounded_Vector	Bounded vector implementation
Aida.Containers.Integer_To_String_Map	Integer to String map (no usage of Aida.Bounded_String)
Aida.Utf8	Subprograms providing UTF8 support implementation
Aida.Utf8_Code_Point	UTF8 code point definition and subprograms
Aida.XML_SAX_Parse	Suitable for XML SAX parsing
Aida.XML_DOM_Parser	XML DOM parser in pure SPARK
Aida.JSON_SAX_Parse	Suitable for JSON SAX parsing
Aida.JSON_DOM_Parser	JSON DOM parser

Wrapper packages for use in SPARK analysable code:

Package	Description
Aida.Directories	Think Ada.Directories but suitable for SPARK analysis
Aida.Sequential_Stream_IO	Think Ada.Sequential_IO but suitable for SPARK analysis
Aida.Text_IO	Think Ada.Text_IO but suitable for SPARK analysis

Full Ada 2012 packages:

Package	Description
Aida.Deepend_XML_SAX_Parse	Suitable for XML SAX parsing. Uses Brad Moore's Deepend for convenience.
Aida.Deepend_XML_DOM_Parser	XML DOM parser. Uses Brad Moore's Deepend for convenience.

Installation using the GNAT compiler

The source code can be compiled by any Ada 2012 compiler, but gpr-files are provided to easily build the source code using the GNAT compiler. Since some of the source code are OS specific the user must instruct gprbuild on which OS the source code is built for:

Build on Linux: gprbuild -XOS=Linux -p -P aida.gpr Build on Mac OS X: gprbuild -XOS=Mac -p -P aida.gpr Build on Windows: gprbuild -XOS=Windows -p -P aida.gpr

To run the tests:

gprbuild -XOS=... -p -P run_aida_tests.gpr cd bin ./run_aida_tests or run_aida_tests.exe depending on OS.

Description of the directory structure

 |
 |-- src (all the source code files can be found in this directory)
 |    |
 |    |-- linux (linux specific source code)
 |    |
 |    |-- mac_os_x (mac os x specific source code)
 |    |
 |    |-- windows (windows specific source code)
 |
 |-- aida.gpr (with this file in your project to use the Aida library for developing SPARK applications)
 |
 |-- deepend.gpr (contains Brad Moore's Deepend)
 |
 |-- aida_deepend.gpr (contains the parts of the Aida library that depends upon Brad Moore's Deepend i.e. XML DOM Parser)
 |
 |-- ahven.gpr (with this file in your project to use the ahven test framework by Tero Koskinen)
 |
 |-- run_aida_tests.gpr (use this file to build the tests)