GNAT

GNAT is a popular compiler for the Ada programming language, based on the GCC compilation framework. It has been written almost entirely in Ada itself, and implements all the annexes of the standard, having been certified for it.

GNAT was originally developed by New York University (NYU), and in fact GNAT stood for GNU NYU Ada Translator. i>), although GNAT is no longer considered to be an acronym. It is currently maintained and developed by the company AdaCore, founded by some of the original compiler creators under the name Ada Core Technologies. AdaCore periodically releases public versions under the GPL license.

GNAT includes a GCC frontend that translates Ada into an intermediate language which is compiled into object code by the GCC backend. GNAT includes other tools to facilitate the compilation of Ada such as a make that infers compilation dependencies directly from the source code.

GNAT was initially released separately from the official GCC branch. On October 2, 2001, the GNAT source code was added to the GCC CVS repository. The last separately released version was GNAT 3.15p, based on GCC 2.8.1. AdaCore recommends against using GNAT versions released under GCC 3.3 and earlier.