[Info-vax] VSI: "Official 8.4-1H1 Launch"

[Paul Sture]

On 2015-06-05, johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk <johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On Friday, 5 June 2015 12:45:39 UTC+1, clairg... at gmail.com  wrote:

Following text rewrapped:

>> 
>> There are many questions here and I think I could answer them all
>> right now but some topics I talk about in public presentations so
>> here are few answers.
>> 
>> VMS has nine language compilers: Ada, BASIC, BLISS, C, C++, COBOL,
>> FORTRAN, MACRO, and PASCAL. Plus, we need the assembler for each
>> architecture. Our thought is to concentrate on keeping C, C++, and
>> FORTRAN up to date standards-wise and evaluate the needs of the
>> others as they arise.
>> 
>> Even if we eliminate our own use of Ada we will still need to provide
>> a compiler for the customers so all nine compilers will be on x86
>> regardless of our own internal needs.
>> 
>> For our GEM-based compilers (BASIC, BLISS, C, COBOL, FORTRAN, PASCAL)
>> we will continue with the current frontends and integrate them with
>> the LLVM (LLVM.ORG) backend code generator. MACRO is a little
>> different but will also connect to LLVM. One of the many nice things
>> about LLVM is that it targets multiple architectures.
>> 
>> VMS_LOADER.EFI is written C and reasonably standard for any platform.
>> (We get if from UEFI.ORG.) We added a few modules in assembler (for
>> Itanium). Our VMS_LOADER.EFI calls the primary VMS loader IPB.EXE and
>> it is also mostly C with a bit of assembler. These two files do most
>> of the configuration setup and when IPB brings in and starts SYSBOOT
>> we are off an running. That is the short version of booting, of
>> course there are a million things happening to make this all work.
>> 
>> Not emulators but VMs. We need to run directly on x86 and as a VM
>> guest and we plan to take advantage of the debugging environment of
>> KVM whenever we can along the way. I'm getting lots on "advice" from
>> the KVM folks on the advantages.
>
> Some interesting snippets there, probably with far more behind them
> than can sensibly be discussed here and now, perhaps both technically
> and commercially.
>
> Is there a boot camp this year?
>
> Is this kind of thing (primarily languages, maybe tools where they
> impact languages) a suitable topic for a session (or two) there,
> which can then be recycled around the world as appropriate?
>
> There may also be people who will soon have a new-found interest in
> LLVM and/or KVM; some readers will already know about these things
> but others would likely appreciate pointers to OS-independent stuff
> which might be relevant to the VMS world in due course.

Yes, the mention of both LLVM and KVM did catch my attention :-)
LLVM is a stepping stone to other products like e.g. Julia.

"Julia’s LLVM-based just-in-time (JIT) compiler combined with the
language’s design allow it to approach and often match the performance
of C."

<http://julialang.org/>

A quick intro to LLVM can be found here, from 2007:

<http://arstechnica.com/apple/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5/11/#llvm>

with a further update on how it helped Apple move forward and become
independent from the gcc compiler here (in 2009):

<http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6/9/>

> Thanks for the update.

My thanks too.

-- 
I don't know what the language of the year 2000 will look like, but I
know it will be called Fortran.                    -- Tony Hoare 1982