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

[Bob Gezelter]

On Thursday, September 5, 2019 at 5:00:01 PM UTC-4, Richard Levitte wrote:
> Den tisdag 3 september 2019 kl. 14:12:26 UTC+2 skrev Simon Clubley:
> > On 2019-09-02, Richard Levitte <richard at levitte.org> wrote:
> > > Den fredag 7 juni 2019 kl. 21:17:20 UTC+2 skrev Phillip Helbig (undress to reply):
> > >> Back in the day, DEC's compilers were widely recognized as the  best, 
> > >> and in many cases were the de-facto industry standard.  I'd like to see 
> > >> that revived.
> > >
> > > For quite a while, DEC C was the meanest compiler I had access to to build OpenSSL, and it did uncover some subtle bugs that the compilers on Linux and Windows didn't.  That is, until we started playing to clang...  that compiler greatly changed the playing field...
> > >
> > 
> > And as Phillip was told at the time, the compiler world has moved on
> > dramatically since the DEC compilers were created.
> > 
> > LLVM based compilers (including clang) are the future for VMS on x86-64.
> > 
> > There is no justifiable business case for spending the time and resources
> > to bring the DEC compilers up to modern standards when the LLVM ecosystem
> > exists.
> 
> If you somehow thought that I, by being a little bit nostalgic, tried to say anything different, please let me promptly rid you of that delusion.
> 
> I very much look forward to using clang on VMS, and considering John Reagan and friends are working their a**es off (or so I suppose) to get it running, I remain hopeful.
> 
> It's quite possible that we will still see a DEC C *front end*, but I've so far gotten the impression that it's going to be clang+LLVM underneath.
> 
> Cheers,
> Richard

Richard,

If I recall John's presentations correctly, it will not be quite as simple as that.

There are VMSisms (e.g. psects, pragmas) that are needed. They may not be often used, but they are needed. If nothing else, the system build procedure will need certain accommodations. One does not want to diverge source trees for something as small as a compiler change.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com