[Info-vax] C99 stuff (Re: The Road to V9.0)

[Simon Clubley]

On 2019-06-10, John Reagan <xyzzy1959 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A compiler port to OpenVMS doesn't need a DCL command line or a
> "traditional" listing file.  Perl and Python for example.  Are they not
> "friendly" enough?  Would somebody turn down a port of Rust if it didn't
> have a command line or listing file?
>

There may be some dogma going on here along the lines of "that's the
way it has always been done so that's how it should be done on x86-64 VMS".

Such dogma doesn't address the question of whether the old way is still
the best way.

1) Compiler listings:

How many of you actually _use_ the listings and how do you use them ?

I have not generated compiler listings in a long time. There is one
form of listing I do use (but not on VMS), and that's the output from
objdump and friends when I am looking at the generated code for an
embedded system image to see if the compiler or linker has done
something unexpected.

Even in that case, that's a listing of the final linked image and
nothing to do with the compiler as such.

People on other systems seem to manage just fine without listings
so why are they still needed in 2019 on VMS ?

2) DCL or Unix style CLI:

With clang (and any other frontends such as the Fortran one), there is
an argument for supporting the traditional DCL qualifiers via a mapping
module to the underlying Unix style command line so that normal compiles
continue to work as expected.

However, I don't see why the vast range of clang command line options
(see https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangCommandLineReference.html for
full details) should need to be mapped to a DCL qualifier for each
and every clang option.

You are going to have to learn that new DCL qualifier name anyway from
some mapping table in the documentation so you may as well just use
the native clang option name via the Unix style command line and have
done with it.

That way, you get the best of both worlds. You get a DCL style command
that you can use with your existing build environments and if you
really need to dig into the full range of options that clang offers,
you can do it via the normal clang command line.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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