[Info-vax] Fun: Object Pascal on VMS

[Craig A. Berry]

On 9/3/24 2:59 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 9/2/2024 7:51 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> On Mon, 2 Sep 2024 11:35:16 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On PC:
>>>
>>> C:\Work\VMS\objectpascal>ppcjvm demo.pas
>>> ...
>>>
>>> On VMS:
>>>
>>> $ java -cp demo.jar:fpcjvm.jar "demo"
>>> F1=0,F2=
>>> F1=123,F2=ABC
>>
>> VMS can no longer self-host its own development stack any more.

It depends on what is meant by "its own development stack." It certainly
does self-host the tools used to build the OS itself.
> There are lots of compilers and interpreters available on VMS.
> 
> There are also a bunch that are not available on VMS. That
> bunch include FPC.
> 
> If someone wanted FPC to run on VMS, then they could
> port it. It is open source.
> 
> FPC has really nothing to do with VMS, but compiling to
> Java byte code is a very broad targeting cross compiler.
> Which I took advantage of.

And I think everyone who wasn't trolling recognized that.  The JVM
brings a big party with it wherever it goes.  .NET would bring a
slightly smaller but still nice-to-have party.  With LLVM as a
foundation for the current crop of VMS compilers, many things are
possible (but nothing is easy).

Has anyone actually tried porting FPC to VMS?  It looks at first glance
like a lot of it is written in Pascal, so I assume it would need to be
cross-compiled initially.