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Build and Package > tada

An opinionated package management tool for Ada.

Package 20 stars GitHub

Tada Tests

Abracadabra was too long. Tomek's Ada, too obvious. An opinionated package management tool for Ada.

Tada handles building, testing, and running Ada packages. It wraps GPRbuild with sensible defaults and a simple package manifest (tada.toml), so you spend less time writing build scripts and more time writing Ada.

Rationale

Tada is a project for personal use. I know Alire exists, is more feature rich and has hundreds of packages. And that's fine. Tada is something I always wanted to build. I write Ada for fun and decided to build many projects in it to understand how the foundational pieces work under the hood. I plan to release more projects in Ada in the near future, and I want to create my own little programming world around the language. I hope someone finds it useful.

Status

This is alpha software. I'm actively working it. YMMV.

Tested on Linux x86_64, MacOS ARM, OpenBSD x86_64 and Windows x86_64.

Note on OpenBSD: you have to:

  • install gcc / gnat > 15.2.0 from ports

  • install gprbuild manually

  • symlink gcc to egcc:

# as root
ln -s /usr/local/bin/egcc /usr/local/bin/gcc

Prerequisites

  • curl
  • gnat
  • gprbuild

By default, tada looks for gnat and gprbuild on the system PATH. You can set up local and global toolchain paths.

  • local: .tada/config.toml (should be in .gitignore)
  • global: ~/.config/tada/config.toml (%LOCALAPPDATA%\tada\config.toml on Windows)

The discovery order is: local -> global -> PATH.

Example config.toml:

[toolchain]
gnat_root = "~/.local/share/alire/toolchains/gnat_native_15.2.1_4640d4b3"
gprbuild_root = "~/.local/share/alire/toolchains/gprbuild_25.0.1_9a2e6cfb"

Installation

See Releases.

curl -L https://github.com/tomekw/tada/releases/download/VERSION/tada-VERSION-PLATFORM -o tada && chmod +x tada

Copy it somewhere on your PATH:

cp tada ~/.local/bin/

Once installed, Tada can build itself:

tada build --profile release

Usage

Usage: tada <command> [options]

Commands:
  build     Compile the package
  cache     Install the package to the local cache
  clean     Remove build artifacts
  config    Display configuration
  init      Create a new package
  install   Install dependencies
  run       Build and run the executable
  test      Build and run the tests
  version   Display version

Run 'tada <command> --help' for command options
  1. Create a new package with tada init PROJECT_NAME, either a binary with --type exe or a library with --type lib. exe is the default.
  2. Run tada install to install dependencies.
  3. Build with tada build. Profile is either --profile debug or --profile release. debug is the default.
  4. Run with tada run. -- separates arguments passed to the target binary.
  5. Test with tada test.
  6. Remove target/ with tada clean.

To add a new dependency:

  1. Add the dependency to your tada.toml, e.g. bar = "0.5.2" under [dependencies] or [dev-dependencies].
  2. Run tada install.
  3. Use with to import the dependency's units in your Ada code. Build, test, and run as usual.

Use tada cache to install the current package into the local cache for use as a dependency.

Tada lets you own generated GPR files. PROJECT_config.gpr exposes three variables you can use:

  • Build_Profile - debug, release
  • Tada_OS - freebsd, linux, macos, openbsd windows, unknown
  • Tada_Arch - aarch64, x86_64, unknown

Manifest file

[package]
name = "foo"
version = "0.1.0"

[dependencies]
bar = "0.5.2"
baz = "1.2.1"

[dev-dependencies]
testy = "0.1.0"

Package naming rules

  • can't be empty
  • is all lower-case
  • letters, numbers and underscores only
  • can't be Ada's reserved word
  • can't start with a number or underscore
  • can't end with an underscore
  • can't have two consecutive underscores

Package versioning rules

Testing

Tada's own test suite uses Testy:

tada test

Packages

See the Packages Index.

If there's something you have built with Tada, and would like to have it included in the index, let me know!

Shell completions

Tada offers Fish completions under completions/fish/tada.fish. Copy them to ~/.config/fish/completions/tada.fish.

Disclaimer

This codebase is written by hand. Claude Code is used for Socratic design exploration and code review.

License

EUPL

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