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# About This Guide

This guide has two aims. The first one is to introduce you to the Ada Semantic Interface Specification (ASIS) and show you how you can build various useful tools on top of ASIS. The second is to describe the ASIS implementation for the GNAT Ada compiler.

GNAT implements both Ada 95 and Ada 2005. As of January 2008, the ASIS standard is specific to Ada 95 and has not yet been updated to Ada 2005. Notwithstanding the status of the ASIS standard, ASIS-for-GNAT includes extensions that account for the new Ada 2005 functionality. You can therefore use ASIS-for-GNAT for Ada 2005 programs, keeping in mind that the Ada 2005-specific support may subsequently change as work on updating the ASIS standard proceeds.

For further information on ASIS-for-GNAT and Ada 2005, please refer to the auxilliary documents ``asis-2005-transition.txt'` and ``features-asis2005'` in the ASIS source directory.

> What This Guide Contains |  |
> What You Should Know Before Reading This Guide |  |
> Related Information |  |
> Conventions |  |

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## What This Guide Contains

This guide contains the following chapters:

- 1. Introduction, contains the general definition of ASIS and gives some examples of tools which can be built on top of ASIS.

- 2. Getting Started, contains a short guided tour through the development and use of ASIS-for-GNAT-based tools.

- 3. ASIS Overview, gives an overview of ASIS, allowing an ASIS newcomer to navigate through the ASIS definition (readers already familiar with ASIS can skip this section).

- 4. ASIS `Context`, defines the ASIS `Context` concept in ASIS-for-GNAT and explains how to prepare a set of Ada components to be processed by an ASIS application.

- 6. ASIS Application Templates, describes a set of Ada source components provided by the ASIS-for-GNAT distribution that may be used as a basis for developing ASIS applications.

- 7. ASIS Tutorials, describes some examples included in the ASIS-for-GNAT distribution.

- 8. How to Build Efficient ASIS Applications, describes how to deal with "tree swapping", a potential performance issue with ASIS applications.

- 9. Processing an Ada Library by an ASIS-Based Tool, shows how to use an ASIS tool on pre-compiled Ada libraries.

- 10. Compiling, Binding and Linking Applications with ASIS-for-GNAT, explains how to compile an ASIS application with ASIS-for-GNAT and how to create the resulting executable.

- 11. ASIS-for-GNAT Warnings, describes the warnings generated by the ASIS implementation.

- 12. Exception Handling and Reporting Internal Bugs, explains what happens if an ASIS implementation internal problem is detected during the processing of an ASIS or ASIS Extensions query

- 13. File Naming Conventions and Application Name Space, explains which names can and cannot be used as names of ASIS application components.

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## What You Should Know Before Reading This Guide

This User's Guide assumes that you are familiar with Ada 95 language, as described in the International Standard ANSI/ISO/IEC-8652:1995 (hereafter referred to as the Ada Reference Manual), and that you have some basic experience in Ada programming with GNAT.

This User's Guide also assumes that you have ASIS-for-GNAT properly installed for your GNAT compiler, and that you are familiar with the structure of the ASIS-for-GNAT distribution (if not, see the top ASIS README file).

This guide does not require previous knowledge of or experience with ASIS itself.

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## Related Information

The following sources contain useful supplemental information:

- GNAT User's Guide, for information about the GNAT environment

- ASIS-for-GNAT Installation Guide

- The ASIS-for-GNAT Reference Manual

- The ASIS 95 definition, available as ISO/IEC International Standard 15291.

- The Web site for the ASIS Working Group: http://www.acm.org/sigada/wg/asiswg

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## Conventions

Following are examples of the typographical and graphic conventions used in this guide:

- `Functions`, `utility program names`, `standard names`, and `classes`.

- ``Option flags'`

- ``File Names'`, ``button names'`, and ``field names'`.

- Variables.

- Emphasis.

- [optional information or parameters]

- Examples are described by text

      and then shown this way.

Commands that are entered by the user are preceded in this manual by the characters "`$` " (dollar sign followed by space). If your system uses this sequence as a prompt, then the commands will appear exactly as you see them in the manual. If your system uses some other prompt, then the command will appear with the `$` replaced by whatever prompt character you are using.

Full file names are shown with the "`/`" character as the directory separator; e.g., ``parent-dir/subdir/myfile.adb'`. If you are using GNAT on a Windows platform, please note that the "`\`" character should be used instead.

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