A Supporting Environment for Contract-Based Programming with Ada 2012

The latest version of programming language Ada, Ada 2012, has introduced the concept of contract-based programming (CBP) and became the first internationally standardized programming language to include CBP as an intrinsic feature of the language. CBP can strictly stipulate and assure the correctness of programs to enhance the reliability and security of safety-critical systems, due to terrible design and/or programming practice, there is an issue that it might obstruct some other factors of the software quality. Therefore, it is essential to implement a supporting environment for CBP with Ada 2012 in order to not only retain reliability by using CBP, but also avoid taking interference to other factors of software quality. Until now, there is no report for proposing supporting environments or tools for CBP, while most studies focus on how to check the conditions of contracts, i.e., what contracts should do for software engineering activities. To support CBP with Ada 2012, this paper analyzes the issues that CBP disturbs some other factors of software quality, proposes methods to avoid the issues, and shows a supporting environment for CBP in Ada 2012 programs.