About This Guide (GNAT Reference Manual)

## 1 About This Guide ¶

This manual contains useful information in writing programs using the GNAT compiler. It includes information on implementation dependent characteristics of GNAT, including all the information required by Annex M of the Ada language standard.

GNAT implements Ada 95, Ada 2005, Ada 2012 and Ada 2022, and it may also be invoked in Ada 83 compatibility mode. By default, GNAT assumes Ada 2012, but you can override with a compiler switch to explicitly specify the language version. (Please refer to the ‘GNAT User’s Guide’ for details on these switches.) Throughout this manual, references to ‘Ada’ without a year suffix apply to all the Ada versions of the language.

Ada is designed to be highly portable. In general, a program will have the same effect even when compiled by different compilers on different platforms. However, since Ada is designed to be used in a wide variety of applications, it also contains a number of system dependent features to be used in interfacing to the external world.

Note: Any program that makes use of implementation-dependent features may be non-portable. You should follow good programming practice and isolate and clearly document any sections of your program that make use of these features in a non-portable manner.