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

[Tim Sneddon]

Craig A. Berry <craigberry at nospam.mac.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/19 3:59 PM, Richard Levitte wrote:
> 
>> 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.
> 

    ...snip...

> I would be surprised if the GEM-to-LLVM translator became a documented
> and supported product, so if anyone was hoping, for example, that PL/I
> might come back from the dead by accident, it probably won't.  It could
> come back on purpose, of course, for those with the will and the way and
> the intellectual property access to make it happen.

That is a difficult one.  Last time PL/I was a "thing" it was using
GEM BL26.  The current GEM is BL50.  There is no way that PL/I could
use a GEM-to-LLVM translator.

PL/I actually used a VCG-to-GEM interface, although I forget the name
of it.  It would probably actually make more sense to go VCG-to-LLVM.
VCG IR is the original IR of the PL/I compiler with extensions for
VAX.  There is an excellent book around called "Engineering a Compiler",
it has the history of PL/I, VCG, C, etc. at DEC.

The unnoticed benefit of this direction could be resurection of the
SCAN compiler... :-p

Anyone got the source code for PEARL around...?

Regards, Tim.