Running Ada on Real-Time Linux

The Real-Time Linux OS (RTLinux) is an attractive platform for real-time programming, since real-time tasks can be guaranteed bounded response times, whilst a number of applications, IDEs, GUIs, etc. are also available for the same platform. In RTLinux, real-time tasks are implemented as kernel modules, implemented in C. Special care must be taken when writing these modules: a bug in a single task can make the whole system to hang or crash, since these modules are executed in the kernel memory space.

This is clearly an area where Ada can be of great help: Ada's strong typing, consistency checking, robust syntax and readability, and the availability of high quality compilers, encourage the writing of correct software and allow to catch bugs early in the implementation.

In this paper, we show the current state of development of a compilation system for Ada programs on RTLinux, taking the GNAT Ada compiler as the starting point.