Mentorship Services

Adopting a new technology requires investment in time and energy. AdaCore experts can reduce these start-up costs through our Mentorship program.

Contents of a Mentorship Package

Mentorship can be purchased for a period ranging from 1 to 12 months; it includes the following activities and components:

Code Reviews

One of the common issues when using a programming language is to take
advantage of its specific design patterns and capabilities. If the AdaCore
mentor can be granted access to the application code, he or she can perform
code reviews and provide specific suggestions on the use of the technology.

Assignment of an AdaCore expert as a mentor

For the duration of the mentorship you will be assigned an AdaCore expert who best meets your needs. He or she will work with you to understand the context of your project and discuss how best to use AdaCore’s technology, based on your objectives.

Access to tool evaluations

If you would like to experiment with tools not covered by your current subscription, they will be made available during the course of the mentorship. Your mentor will guide you through the evaluation allowing you to fully assess their benefit to your project.

Customized training

Mentorship includes training sessions that provide your developers with a fundamental understanding of our technology. This training is customized to your team and project and is provided when needed. Topics can include Programming Languages, Using Proofs and Proof Technologies, and Tool Usage. See this page for more detail on our training offer.

Project meetings

The AdaCore mentor will meet with your team on a regular basis (monthly, bi-monthly, etc.) to monitor project progress and discuss outstanding issues.

Virtual conferences between the mentor and your team

On a weekly or bi-weekly basis, the AdaCore mentor will organize an on-line conference with your project team in order to monitor project progress and discuss outstanding issues.

Additional support follow-up by the mentor

AdaCore’s on-line support is provided directly by the technology developers themselves. Your team will receive the same high level of support as customers under a standard product subscription. In addition, the AdaCore mentor can assist on ticket submission, including help in preparing reproducers or code samples.

Code assistance on the customer application

If the AdaCore mentor can be granted access to the application under development, he or she can directly work with your team on the project code and develop small examples relating to the project objectives.

On-line follow-up

All the activities scheduled as part of the mentorship can be handled on-line to accommodate COVID restrictions.

Examples of Mentorship Topics

A proof of concept or prototyping migration from C to Ada and SPARK (3 to 12 months)

The Ada and SPARK languages are relatively easy to learn for an embedded C developer. To take full advantage of the technology, however, programming patterns and development methodologies must be adapted. The AdaCore mentor is a senior software developer who will be tasked to understand the context of your project and work with your team to develop the first pieces of code in Ada and SPARK. He or she will also contribute to the design and verification activities.

Deploying and optimizing CodePeer in an existing workflow (1 to 2 months)

Integrating a static analysis tool such as CodePeer into an existing workflow raises several questions, such as:

Which error or warning messages should be taken into account?
At which level should the tool be configured?
When should reviews be conducted?
How should potential errors be analyzed and repaired?
How should the tool be integrated into the team workflow?

The answers to those questions depend on the context and what you are trying to achieve. The AdaCore mentor will help with tool configuration and integration, allowing you to get the best results and benefits.

Migration to GNAT Pro from another Ada compiler (2 to 4 months)

Although Ada is a very portable language, every Ada compiler has vendor-specific behavior and extensions that are allowed by the standard (pragmas, attributes, elaboration order, etc.). Migrating from a different vendor to GNAT Pro may thus require some source code adaptation. The AdaCore mentor will be able to leverage our in-house expertise to help solve potential migration issues.