[Info-vax] GCC for VMS, was: Re: fortran compiler roadmap?

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article
<craigberry-0E8D50.22030917042013 at news.eternal-september.org>, "Craig A.
Berry" <craigberry at mac.com.invalid> writes: 

> While VAX Fortran was my first computer language, I haven't done any 
> Fortran in twenty years and I don't have a very good sense of what role 
> the library plays in the language.  Given that SYS$SHARE:DEC$FORRTL.EXE 
> is about one tenth the size of SYS$SHARE:DECC$SHR.EXE, I'm guessing 
> it's not quite as big a deal as the C run-time.  But still, getting a 
> "foreign" Fortran compiler fully functional on VMS would likely require 
> various kinds of glue for exit handlers, threads, and such, and, if you 
> want to use native libraries, rights to use SYS$LIBRARY:FORSYSDEF.TLB 
> or an independently-developed equivalent.
> 
> And then you have a compiler with no debugger, so you either spend lots 
> of time in the entrails of the compiler making it produce what the 
> OpenVMS debugger expects, or you port gdb, or write you're own 
> debugger.

Right.  Due to a similar question, someone suggested to me to get gcc, 
gnufortran or whatever (not sure of the differences; there was a fork 
somewhere) running on VMS.  While a compiler is surely possible, i.e. 
something which will turn source code into an executable which will work 
as intended, one really wants it integrated into VMS with the debugger, 
exit handling etc.

$ WRITE SYS$OUTPUT "Program too complex for processor"
$ EXIT

The above is a standard-conforming Fortran compiler, but the quality of 
implementation is low.