RxAda: An Ada implementation of the ReactiveX API

Abstract

The ReactiveX API, also known as the Reactive Extensions in the .NET world, is a recently popularized reactive programming framework for asynchronous, event-based, multi-threaded programming. Presented by its proponents as a solid tool for applications requiring a simple yet powerful approach to event-driven systems, it has seen favorable adoption in many popular languages. Although Ada has been long-favored by powerful tasking capabilities that reduce the need for additional multi-threading support, the reactive approach has properties that are well-suited to the safety and maintainability culture predominant in the Ada world, such as complexity reduction, race-condition and deadlock avoidance, and enhanced maintainability by means of concise and well-defined information flows. This work presents the design for a ReactiveX Ada implementation that aims to balance desirable library properties such as compile-time checks, reasonable user-required generic instantiations, and a shallow learning curve for both library clients and maintainers. The Ada programmer can henceforth benefit from the abundant documentation existing for the language-agnostic ReactiveX approach without stepping out of the Ada tool chain.