Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[Pierre van de Laar]

Dear Members of comp.lang.ada,

We would like to inform you that we have made Renaissance-Ada, a toolset  for legacy Ada software, open source:
https://github.com/TNO/Renaissance-Ada

The Renaissance-Ada project builds on top of LibAdalang and includes the following functionality

* Dependency Graph Extractor that produces a graphml file for visualization and querying with e.g. yEd and Neo4J.
* Rejuvenation Library that allow analysis and manipulation of Ada code based on concrete patterns.
* Rewriters_Library that enables automatic rewriting of Ada code based on concrete patterns.
* Code Reviewer that automatically reviews Ada code based on a large list of rewrite rules.

If you have any question about this toolset don’t hesitate to contact me!

Yours sincerely,
   Pierre van de Laar
   Research Fellow
   TNO-ESI

Re: Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[Luke A. Guest]

On 27/01/2022 12:32, Pierre van de Laar wrote:
> Dear Members of comp.lang.ada,
> 
> We would like to inform you that we have made Renaissance-Ada, a toolset  for legacy Ada software, open source:
> https://github.com/TNO/Renaissance-Ada
> 

What does "for legacy Ada software" mean?

Re: Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[Andreas ZEURCHER]

On Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 6:55:11 AM UTC-6, Luke A. Guest wrote:
> On 27/01/2022 12:32, Pierre van de Laar wrote: 
> > Dear Members of comp.lang.ada, 
> > 
> > We would like to inform you that we have made Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, open source: 
> > https://github.com/TNO/Renaissance-Ada 
> >
> What does "for legacy Ada software" mean?
I would suspect that “for legacy Ada software” might be a euphemistic way of saying:  doesn't support modern Ada after either Ada83 or Ada95.

Re: Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[Luke A. Guest]

On 28/01/2022 02:23, Andreas ZEURCHER wrote:
> On Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 6:55:11 AM UTC-6, Luke A. Guest wrote:
>> On 27/01/2022 12:32, Pierre van de Laar wrote:
>>> Dear Members of comp.lang.ada,
>>>
>>> We would like to inform you that we have made Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, open source:
>>> https://github.com/TNO/Renaissance-Ada
>>>
>> What does "for legacy Ada software" mean?
> I would suspect that “for legacy Ada software” might be a euphemistic way of saying:  doesn't support modern Ada after either Ada83 or Ada95.


I kind of read is as, they made a toolset ages ago and have ported it to 
libadalang. But if it's new, why only support older Ada when you've 
based it on a newer Ada, especially a newer ada lib?

It's weird.

Re: Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[Jesper Quorning]

fredag den 28. januar 2022 kl. 03.23.32 UTC+1 skrev Andreas ZEURCHER:
> On Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 6:55:11 AM UTC-6, Luke A. Guest wrote: 
> > What does "for legacy Ada software" mean?
> I would suspect that “for legacy Ada software” might be a euphemistic way of saying: doesn't support modern Ada after either Ada83 or Ada95.

The video [1] from the README tells an up-to-date Ada success story.
 
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHrd-9wgALM

Re: Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[Simon Wright]

Jesper Quorning <jesper.quorning@gmail.com> writes:

> fredag den 28. januar 2022 kl. 03.23.32 UTC+1 skrev Andreas ZEURCHER:
>> On Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 6:55:11 AM UTC-6, Luke A. Guest wrote: 
>> > What does "for legacy Ada software" mean?
>> I would suspect that “for legacy Ada software” might be a
>> euphemistic way of saying: doesn't support modern Ada after either
>> Ada83 or Ada95.
>
> The video [1] from the README tells an up-to-date Ada success story.
>  
> [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHrd-9wgALM

Interesting!

I found myself using a case statement rather than an if so as to avoid a
'use type': U is an Interfaces.Unsigned_16,

   case U is
      when 1 => do one thing;
      when others => do something else;
   end case;

which you can see being problematic if the tooling converts this to an
if statement. Of course, without the 'use type' it won't compile.

Re: Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[Jeffrey R.Carter]

On 2022-01-28 13:31, Simon Wright wrote:
> 
> I found myself using a case statement rather than an if so as to avoid a
> 'use type': U is an Interfaces.Unsigned_16,
> 
>     case U is
>        when 1 => do one thing;
>        when others => do something else;
>     end case;

These days you can use "in"

if U in 1 then

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Write clearly--don't sacrifice clarity for 'efficiency.'"
Elements of Programming Style
186

Re: Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[Stephen Leake]

Andreas ZEURCHER <ZUERCHER_Andreas@outlook.com> writes:

> On Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 6:55:11 AM UTC-6, Luke A. Guest wrote:
>> On 27/01/2022 12:32, Pierre van de Laar wrote: 
>> > Dear Members of comp.lang.ada, 
>> > 
>> > We would like to inform you that we have made Renaissance-Ada, a
>> > toolset for legacy Ada software, open source:
>> > https://github.com/TNO/Renaissance-Ada 
>> >
>> What does "for legacy Ada software" mean?
> I would suspect that “for legacy Ada software” might be a euphemistic
> way of saying: doesn't support modern Ada after either Ada83 or Ada95.

Except that it's based on libadalang, which supports Ada 2022, as well
as previous versions.

So I'm guess "legacy" refers to wanting/needing to adapt old Ada code to
a new compiler and/or environement, requirements, etc. Tools for
automatic rewrite would be handy for that.

They could easily leave out "legacy" - rewriting cann be useful for
recent code as well. But maybe their marketing department thinks there's
a niche that they can more easily sell to?

-- 
-- Stephe

Re: Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[Simon Wright]

"Luke A. Guest" <laguest@archeia.com> writes:

> On 27/01/2022 12:32, Pierre van de Laar wrote:
>> Dear Members of comp.lang.ada,
>> We would like to inform you that we have made Renaissance-Ada, a
>> toolset  for legacy Ada software, open source:
>> https://github.com/TNO/Renaissance-Ada
>> 
>
> What does "for legacy Ada software" mean?

Looking at the link, it seems that it's software that has been just
growing, to the point at which it's becoming unmaintainable. I don't see
anything that says Ada83 (though software with that sort of problem is
likely to have been around for a long time).

Re: Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[G.B.]

On 28.01.22 11:27, Simon Wright wrote:
> 
>>> https://github.com/TNO/Renaissance-Ada
>>>
>>
>> What does "for legacy Ada software" mean?
> 
> Looking at the link, it seems that it's software that has been just
> growing, to the point at which it's becoming unmaintainable. I don't see
> anything that says Ada83 (though software with that sort of problem is
> likely to have been around for a long time).

The presentation seems to be openly addressing "legacy / technical debt".
Referring to an large code base.

The README in, e.g.,  Dependency_Graph_Extractor lists some
contemporary Versions of compiler and tools.

Speculating, an ever more complex and changing language requires
efforts becoming correspondingly more complex and changing.
I understand that recent GNATs have dropped some support for less
recent editions of the Ada language.

Anyway, if Renaissance-Ada extracts information about programs, it adds clarity.
That seems helpful, as it saves time and money - if that's what you
want to achieve.

Re: Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[AdaMagica]

G.B. schrieb am Samstag, 29. Januar 2022 um 10:26:36 UTC+1:
> I understand that recent GNATs have dropped some support for less 
> recent editions of the Ada language. 

Hu? Examples please.

Re: Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[G.B.]

On 29.01.22 10:49, AdaMagica wrote:
> G.B. schrieb am Samstag, 29. Januar 2022 um 10:26:36 UTC+1:
>> I understand that recent GNATs have dropped some support for less
>> recent editions of the Ada language.
> 
> Hu? Examples please.

gnat1: invalid switch: -gnat83

Re: Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[Simon Wright]

"G.B." <bauhaus@notmyhomepage.invalid> writes:

> On 29.01.22 10:49, AdaMagica wrote:
>> G.B. schrieb am Samstag, 29. Januar 2022 um 10:26:36 UTC+1:
>>> I understand that recent GNATs have dropped some support for less
>>> recent editions of the Ada language.
>> Hu? Examples please.
>
> gnat1: invalid switch: -gnat83

This is still accepted in FSF GCC 11, 12. GNAT CE, on the other hand
... who knows why

Re: Renaissance-Ada, a toolset for legacy Ada software, made open source

[AdaMagica]

GNAT CE only supports the newest Ada generation. Quite annoying. This has been so since at least 2016.