[Info-vax] VAX Macro to C conversion

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-06-24 02:35:42 +0000, andrew at feeandl.com said:

> Hello world,
> 
> We have a pile of now quite ancient VAX MACRO code that forms part of 
> our OpenVMS business software which we now run on Itanium. Historically 
> we needed the performance benefits that MACRO gave us, but these days 
> we still have performance needs, but with today's hardware we are 
> confident that a higher level language such as C should still give the 
> performance we need and also be easier for our non-native VMS devs to 
> deal with.
> 
> Poking around looking for a way to move this MACRO to something 
> slightly easier to read and manage the first hit we got was a package 
> called XTRAN. On the surface it seems that it might be a good fit for 
> us.
> 
> Just wondering what you folks know of this tool, or even others that 
> might be worth our looking at.

Haven't used XTRAN, nor seen its output.  I've heard apocryphal tales, 
but no details.  First heard of it from Keith Cayemberg, back some 15 
years ago.

Source code conversion has been possible for quite some time.

But the output of most of the automated-conversion converted code 
around has itself been somewhere less than maintainable.

And some Macro32 source code can be more complex than a translation 
tool might permit. OpenVMS has some of that, as is being discussed 
else-thread.

It's only been recently that automated refactoring of source code has 
gotten pretty good, and whether that's even available here, or can work 
with this particular C output?

One common path for these is to have developers convert each module as 
any substantial modifications are required.


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