Community Input for the Maintenance and Revision of the Ada Programming Language

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 9 (WG 9) is responsible for the maintenance and
revision of the Ada Programming Language and associated standards and
technical reports. As part of the language maintenance activity, WG 9 has
established a group of Ada experts as the Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG). The
ARG receives input from the Ada community at large to consider for inclusion
in revision to the Ada programming language standard. The WG 9 has produced
a number of revisions to the language in accordance with ISO policy and
to address the evolution of technology (Ada 83, Ada 95, Ada 2005, Ada 2012).


Presently, the ARG is beginning work on a revision to Ada 2012 so that ISO
standardization of the new version can be completed by 2020. This is a
relatively short horizon, but it ensures that the language continues to
evolve, and at the same time requires that the changes to the language are
evolutionary and do not present an undue implementation burden on existing
compilers and users.


WG 9 requests the Ada community to submit enhancements to be considered for
inclusion in the next revision of Ada. These should be sent to
ada-c@ada-auth.org as described in the Ada Reference Manual
Introduction
(http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/rm12_w_tc1/html/RM-0-3.html#p58). For
enhancement requests, it is very important to describe the programming
problem and why the Ada 2012 solution is complex, expensive, or impossible.
A detailed description of a specific enhancement is welcome but not
necessarily required. The goal of the ARG is to solve as many
programming problems as possible with new/enhanced Ada features that fit
into the existing Ada framework. Thus the ARG will be looking at
the language as a whole, which may suggest alternative solutions to
the problem posed by an enhancement request. For a more detailed discussion,
the guidelines presented for the Ada 2005 revision (see
http://archive.adaic.com/news/pressrelease/call4apis.html) can be used as
the ARG requirements are little changed.


WG9 accepts enhancement requests at any time. To be considered for inclusion
in the next revision of Ada, enhancement requests must be received by 15
January 2018. Suggestions received after that date may be considered if
they relate to topics already under development; others will be considered
only for future versions of Ada.


WG 9 has directed the ARG to focus its work on three areas of particular
interest to the Ada community: additional facilities for multi-core and
multithreaded programming, improved facilities for program correctness, and
enhanced container libraries. There are numerous proposed enhancements in
these and other areas. Some of these proposals originated with members of
the ARG, and others from members of the community at large. The interested
reader can find the current state of these at
http://www.ada-auth.org/AI12-SUMMARY.HTML.


WG 9 encourages members of the Ada community at large to use the guidelines
outlined above to provide input to WG 9 and the ARG for needed revisions and
upgrades to the Ada programming language.

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