[Info-vax] Which programming language would you like to see officially supported on VMS ?

[David Goodwin]

On Friday, August 14, 2020 at 3:08:43 AM UTC+12, John Reagan wrote:
> On Thursday, August 13, 2020 at 10:57:25 AM UTC-4, Dave Froble wrote:
> > On 8/13/2020 8:55 AM, gérard Calliet wrote:
> > > Le 20/02/2020 à 03:45, John Reagan a écrit :
> > >> I'll need Cmake on OpenVMS to build LLVM on x86.
> > > Will we get Cmake and up-to-date LLVM also on itanium ?
> > > <
> > 
> > Gerald,
> > 
> >  From some of your posts it appears you're interested in seeing VSI 
> > continue to develop for VAX, Alpha, and itanic.  If so, then you're 
> > going to be disappointed.  All three of those are basically dead 
> > products.  x86 is the beginning of the future.
> > 
> > Without being John, I can still pretty much guarantee you that you will 
> > not see LLVM on VAX, Alpha, or itanic from VSI.
> > 
> > While there are multiple reasons, the main reason is that VSI is 
> > leverging x86 work on LLVM for VMS usage.  As far as I know, there is no 
> > LLVM already on itanic.  Thus, VSI would have to develop the entire 
> > compiler tool chain, and, that just isn't going to happen.
> > 
> > -- 
> > David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
> > Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
> > DFE Ultralights, Inc.
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> 
> There USED to be an Itanium target for LLVM but it is long dead and removed from the current tree.  I've never seen reference to a VAX or Alpha target.  It is pretty "easy" to write an LLVM target.  Somebody is trying a 68040 target and I've also seen a joke target for Z-80 (as a cross-compiler only of course).

There was an Alpha target too but it was removed in 2011:
https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/4c9fca99c9a6734bb33c34aeaf40b71c4002757e

Looks like it was removed because no one was actively maintaining it:
http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2011-October/044594.html

No idea how hard it would be to resurrect the Alpha target but I guess there is a fair bit of code there to look at if anyone is feeling enthusiastic.