If you want to develop Ada programs and libraries on Debian, please read the Debian Policy for Ada: http://people.debian.org/~lbrenta/debian-ada-policy.html The default Ada compiler is and always will be the package `gnat'. Debian contains many programs and libraries compiled with it, which are all ABI-compatible. Starting with gnat-4.2, Debian provides both zero-cost and setjump/longjump versions of the run-time library. The zero-cost exception handling mechanism is the default as it provides the best performance. The setjump/longjump exception handling mechanism is new and only provided as a static library. It is necessary to use this exception handling mechanism in distributed (annex E) programs. If you wish to use the new sjlj library: 1) call gnatmake with --RTS=sjlj 2) call gnatbind with -static Do NOT link your programs with libgnat-4.2.so, because it uses the ZCX mechanism.